David Middendorp
Biography & Curriculum vitae
David Middendorp started as a dancer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague at the age of sixteen. He soon felt more drawn towards modern dance and therefore decided to join Codarts in Rotterdam. Here, he won the Dansersfonds scholarship of ’79, which enabled him to study at The Julliard School in New York for a short period of time. Middendorp started his professional dance career at the company Introdans, where he performed in works by choreographers such as Nils Christe, Ton Wiggers and Conny Janssen, amongst others.
Middendorp continued his dancing career with the Saarländische Staatstheater and the Ballet Theater München. Here, he created his first choreographies Bread-peace (2002) and Dreamsketch (2003) under the direction of Philip Taylor. This latter piece became part of the Ballet Theater München’s repertoire in 2005. In 2004 Middendorp returned to The Hague where he created several pieces for Korzo productions, all known for Middendorp’s ingenious combination of dance and technology.
In the following years Middendorp created choreographies for Korzo and Introdans, for both adults, as well as for the youth. His works have been performed at festivals such as Lowlands, the Parade, Oerol and at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. In addition to his own productions, Middendorp also created video scenery for other makers, such as the Dutch Don’t Dance Division (DDDDD), Percossa and the Meekers.
In 2014, Middendorp was asked to perform in the TV programme America’s Got Talent, where he reached the finals. This was followed by the first full-evening performance Blue Technology of Middendorp’s company Another Kind of Blue (AKOB), which was shown in over sixty Dutch theatres. AKBO also performed at events such as the VII Gala International de Ballet de Buenos Aires, Youth America Grand Prix Gala (New York), Context (Moscow), Kuopio Dance Festival, Holland Dance Festival and Festival de Nederlandse Dansdagen (The Dutch Dance Festival).
In addition to AKOB’s regular programme, the company also performed for international organisations such as Mastercard, IBM, the Royal family of Abu Dhabi and others. In The Netherlands, Another Kind of Blue created the new choreography Painting (2017) for a tour of Introdans. A year later, the company presented the full evening programme Flirt with Reality, which had its premiere on October 20, 2018 in the Zuiderstrandtheater in The Hague, and subsequently toured throughout the country until February 2019. With this same programme AKBO performed at Sadler’s Wells, London in July 2019. In March 2019 the company performed Airman for the ministries of the Netherlands. In May 2019 Middendorp was invited to speak at Technart in Bilboa, Spain. In September Middendorp did a lecture about the combination of dance and technology at the TU Delft. In 2020 AKOB created the new dance piece Wereldleiders in co-production with Introdans for GEK GEZICHT, a full-length production where Middendorp’s previous pieces Face Machine and Blue Journey were also shown. In October 2020 Middendorp introduced AKOB’s stunning choreography in virtual reality HandsON, a co-production with Festival de Nederlandse Dansdagen Digitaal in October 2020. The new full-length production Wave is scheduled for 2021.