Young Dutch choreographers: the crest of Holland's new wave.

The International Festival of New Dance in Montreal October 3 through 15 should prove a revelation to anyone who thought dancing in the Netherlands was generally a product of Jiri Kylian's Netherlands Dance Theater (NDT), which consists of three separate troupes and performs frequently in the U.S., and Dutch National Ballet, the country's largest company, whose repertoire includes some twenty Balanchine ballets as well as the classics. Actually, there are at least five very active medium-sized Dutch modern companies and many smaller ones that operate as collaborations among dancers and choreographers. At Montreal this year, Holland is the country of honor, and most of the companies it is sending over represent this postmodern generation.

Like their noted predecessors--Kylian, Hans van Manen, Krisztina de Chatel, Ton Simons, Bianca van Dillen, Truus Bronkhorst--the new generation has also created personal movement vocabularies. Because each has a very individual way of working, it is difficult to find a typically "Dutch" identity in this enormous pluralism among the young. The new generation does share some traits, however; they are products of a hi-tech society and expect state-of-the-art visual and musical effects. While demanding high technical standards from dancers as well as technicians, they create movements that are speedy, whimsical, and often unpredictable.

There is already a national tradition in Holland of encouraging fledgling choreographers. The major cities subsidize studios and workshops where free-lance dancemakers can create and dancers can take daily classes. And the establishment looks after its own. In Amsterdam the National Ballet organizes yearly workshops where its dancers can try their hand at moving their colleagues around. Dancer Ted Brandsen, thirty-six, has been inspired by the National's tradition of Balanchine and van Manen performances to seek lyrical movements done with clarity. Brandsen's third ballet, Blue Field, which premiered recently, is a colorful work of ensemble dancing with three pas de deux, the last of which left a very profound impression. Two other National dancers, Krzysztof Pastor and Johan Greben, have also shown great promise as choreographers.

Kylian in The Hague has been giving his dancers opportunities to show their wares in all three NDT companies. In this sense we can speak of a "Hague school." Nacho Duato, now artistic director of Spanish National Ballet, began here. In the last few years Kylian has commissioned works from company members Paul Lightfoot, Patrick Delcroix, and Martin Muller.

Lightfoot, twenty-seven and a graduate of London's Royal Ballet School, started dancing at NDT 2, the junior company, nine years ago. In 1988 he made his first piece for the workshop; a year later NDT 2 gave him his first commission. Currently he is choreographing for all three companies. Last October at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NDT 3 performed his Susto, a piece in which dancers fought with sand from an enlarged hourglass. For NDT 2 Lightfoot choreographed Solitaire, in which lovers search for one another while a dancer bound to a chair hangs from a rope. Lightfoot, discussing Kylian's influence on his work, says that he is more interested in patterns of imperfection and the search for beauty in ugliness while Kylian strives for natural beauty in movement.

Delcroix and Muller, by contrast, create charming, funny pieces for NDT 2. Muller, who debuted in 1992 with Who Is Watching Who, has decided to quit dancing this fall at age thirty-two and to concentrate on free-lance choreography. Meanwhile, NDT continues to turn up talent. At its February 12 workshop eighteen works were premiered. The biggest surprise was Swedish-born Johan Inger's superbly funny Time an Angel; his first choreography for NDT 2 will premiere this fall.

The very talented choreographer Ed Wubbe, thirty-seven, started at NDT and is now artistic director of Scapino Rotterdam. He has choreographed for most of the Dutch companies and a few foreign ones, creating more than thirty-eight ballets. One of his latest works, Kathleen, which employs high-impact dancing, speedy turns, clinging lifts, and soaring leaps to portray the lives of teenagers in a big city, was a big success last season at the Joyce Theater in New York City.

Wubbe prefers evening-length pieces. Besides Kathleen he has choreographed Rameau and Perfect Skin, which are dramatic, intriguing, and extreme. Themes of unraveling, disruption, and friction interest him more than the aesthetics of Kylian and van Manen, he says. He is currently choreographing his own version of Romeo and Juliet in a contemporary setting to an eclectic score.

Itzik Galili, thirty-three, is an Israeli choreographer who five years ago was invited to work for Scapino and NDT, among others. His works with their profound themes and fluent, lyrical movements give one the impression that he is a pupil of Kylian's. Galili, who never had proper dance training, is self-taught; he dedicated himself to dance at age twenty-three. His Blind Kingdom and Earth Apples for NDT 2 and Ma's Bandage for Scapino are emotional, impulsive, and from the heart. The duet When You See God Tell Him, which he dances with Jennifer Hanna, is a serenely beautiful creation.

The above choreographers have had chances to break through via the larger companies, and often work more or less in traditions inspired by Kylian and van Manen. There are many young independent choreographers in the Netherlands, however, whose fascination with new ways to move has, over and over again, resulted in very interesting performances.

The vitality of the young Dutch choreographers operating outside the mainstream will become better known after the seventh Montreal Festival of New Dance, where the Netherlands is being represented with premieres by talented young Dutch choreographers, most of them Young Turks based in Amsterdam.

The duo of Andrea Leine, twenty-eight, and Harijono Roebana, thirty-nine, has impressed audiences with such works as Suites and The Circle Effect. The choreographers, search for new dance material results in a nonorganic, almost surly way of moving. Leine and Roebana have developed a technique that permits them to move one side of their bodies in a controlled manner while moving the other in a casual, even careless fashion. Working at the extreme, they perform intriguing movements while striving for beauty, which appears at unexpected moments.

In Montreal, they are collaborating with Paul Selwyn Norton, thirty-one, who creates very theatrical work where text and music dominate dance. He has become very occupied with skin, symbolized by a rubber costume which he peels off. This theme, "the inside/outside of the body," also interests Leine and Roebana, and it will be interesting to see their new coproduction with Norton.

Angelika Oei is an independent choreographer who has lately become very involved with film. Her works remind me of the creations of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren. Oei's choreography is very organic and tender and always surprising. She chooses her dancers for their personalities. and abilities which she explores. In Montreal, she will create one of her Les Depots Lapidaires ("Gemstone Deposits"), works that she improvises on the spot using her own troupe along with dancers from the community.

Suzy Blok, thirty-one, and Christopher Steel, thirty-two, are two dancers who have previously attracted attention with their Angelless and Still You. Their work for Montreal, Anybody, was made in collaboration with Poodle naked, a hip-hop group, and presented as a pop concert, with the audience standing throughout. The dancers and musicians are together onstage, and the choreography is wild, with some elegant duets and comic acts here and there.

Maria Voortman, thirty-one, and Roberto De Jonge, thirty-three, will perform their piece Her Silent Smile about the funeral of a good friend. Their recollections are portrayed in abstract movements. Voortman, who worked for a few years with Jan Fabre, dances in this piece with two other women. The atmosphere is one of hallucination. The dancers wear toe shoes on one foot only and push this toe into the ground. With this unusual use of gravity and equilibrium, the feet separately express different symbols. Her Silent Smile abounds with symbolic props, such as small coffee grinders (a fixture at funerals where the aroma of coffee offsets any funereal odor).

Opening night of the Montreal festival is reserved for one of the established Dutch modern dance companies, Krisztina de Chatel Dance Group. Fifty-year-old de Chatel came to Holland twenty-two years ago from Hungary after studying with Kurt Jooss and Jean Cebron. For more than two decades de Chatel has explored structure and space in an orderly, unemotional manner with boldly simple images. Her variations and repetitions create a rigid form and strong tension. She often chooses to use minimal music and collaborates with sculptors and painters. Lines, Staunch, and Change are among her important works.

Muralis, to premiere opening night, symbolizes modern Europe. Judith Lansink has designed a long wall, diagonally placed deep into the stage to leave half of the space for the dancers. The wall's only decoration is a Renaissance balcony. The first part is danced to Schubert's String Quartet in C Major, performed live onstage. Five male dancers move graciously with long steps, their arms swinging. Covering the space in strict lines and fluidly changing positions, their bodies touch each other gently, building up and releasing tension. Two women at the balcony embrace, climb down, and mingle with the men. The ensemble dancing is intense but sober.

In the second half, the wall is stripped away until only the framework and the balcony are left. The dance steps are repeated exactly the same, only now without music. Life where the wall was torn down, de Chatel says, is now empty and without beauty.

Helma Klooss is Dance Magazine correspondent in the Netherlands who reports on European dance companies.