One of the most exciting choreographers on the modern dance scene today, Hans van Manen’s work is characterised by a supreme musicality and striking versatility. The ballets in this double bill, recorded under studio conditions at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, reflect his choreographic preoccupation with relationship between the sexes. Danced to music by Tchaikovsky, Janacek, Stravinsky, Mascagni and Massenet, Black Cake includes some wonderfully funny sequences. The scene is a society party. Elegantly-dressed couples dance with each other and van Manen plays with ballroom conventions, revealing a whole range of undercurrents in the relationships between the men and the women. In the finale – set to the Méditation from Massenet’s Thaїs – the party-goers succumb to the influence of alcohol and all pretence of sophisticated decorum crumbles. Both humour and aggression are to be found in Concertante, which generates an explosive tension in a succession of encounters between four male and four female dancers. The springboard for this ballet is Frank Martin’s expressive Petite Symphonie Concertante.