Princess Beatrix and Princess Margriet attended the performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of Introdans.
On the evening of Thursday, 10 February, the royal sisters arrived at Amare Theatre in The Hague to watch the performance, with a choreography designed especially for the occasion.
The event was created in support of the Princess Beatrix Spierfonds, which is celebrating its 65th anniversary. In addition, Princess Margriet is patron of Introdans. The performance took place as part of the Holland Dance Festival.
The revenue from this special performance will be donated to the Princess Beatrix Spierfonds and will be used to further research into muscular diseases, such as muscular dystrophy or ALS.
The company was selected because “Dance symbolizes the ultimate freedom of movement, which starts with healthy muscles. This freedom is not self-evident for people with a muscle disease,” according to the Royal House of the Netherlands’ website.
Introdans is a company founded in 1971 in Arnhem, the Netherlands, by Hans Focking and Ton Wiggers, with the latter designing the company’s earliest choreographies.
Slowly, they gained national and international praise; Introdans was among the first foreign dance companies to perform after the Bolshoi Theatre’s grand reopening in 2011, following six years of extensive renovation work.
They have also performed in Broadway several times, with their first appearance there dating all the way back to 2001; in 2006, they made their debut at Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón, where The Royal Ballet Principal dancer Marianela Núñez began her ballet studies.
Princess Beatrix was Queen of the Netherlands until 2013 when she abdicated in favour of her son, King Willem-Alexander. Since then, she has kept a lower profile on public duties, although her agenda doesn’t seem to have slowed down.
This was one of the first engagements she undertook after recovering from a mild case of COVID-19 in December 2021.
Princess Margriet is Princess Beatrix’s sister, the third daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. She was born in Ottawa, Canada, during her family’s stay in the North American country to flee from Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.
