Ernst Meisner
The Dutchman Ernst Meisner is exceptionally versatile artist. Besides being a choreographer, he has also been the artistic coordinator of Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company since its foundation in 2013. Since 2018, he has also been the artistic director of the Dutch National Ballet Academy.
Meisner was a dancer with The Royal Ballet (2000-2010) and Dutch National Ballet (2010-2013). He already started choreographing during his career as a dancer. He created several works for The Royal Ballet’s choreographic workshop, including the duet What if, for Melissa Hamilton and Sergei Polunin, who were already very promising dancers at the time. For Dutch National Ballet, Meisner’s works included And after we were (2011), the children’s production The little big chest (2011), Saltarello (2012) and the Dutch National Canta Ballet (2012), all created during his time as a dancer with the company.
At the beginning of 2013, he created Study in Six, to music by Jude Vaclavik, for the New York Choreographic Institute, which is affiliated to New York City Ballet. He has also done the choreography for dance films by Crystal Ballet and for Bounden, a dance game/app by GameOven Studios.
In recent years, Dutch National Ballet has presented Meisner’s creations Axiom of Choice (2014), Merge (2016), In Transit (2017), Impermanence (2018) and Prometheus (2020/2021). For his Junior Company, Meisner has created Embers (2013), Lollapalooza (2013), No Time Before Time (2016) and Largo (2020). Together with Marco Gerris from ISH Dance Collective, he has also created the imaginative, highly acclaimed hiphop-meets-ballet productions Narnia: The lion, the witch and the wardrobe (2015) and GRIMM (2018), in which the Junior Company dancers share the stage with dancers from ISH. With Dorian (2023), Meisner and Gerris continue this tradition.
In 2021, Meisner was awarded the Special Prize of Dansersfonds ’79 for his enormous contribution to talent development within academic dance. In 1999, he also received the so-called Incentive Award from the Dansersfonds, for promising dancers at the beginning of their careers.
- Season 2023-2024
From 3 February to 17 March 2024, the Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company will tour Ten through the Netherlands to celebrate both the ten-year anniversary of the company and that of its artistic coordinator Ernst Meisner.
Awards:
- 1999: place in the finale of Eurovision Young Dancers Competition
- 1999: Incentive Award from Stichting Dansersfonds’79
- 2021: Special Prize Dansersfonds'79