The 7th Symphony by Beethoven is often referred to as a 'dance symphony' and was described by Wagner as a 'grand apotheosis of the dance', but van Schayk hears in the music the voice of an almost obsessive idealism. Beethoven wrote the his Symphony No. 7 between 1812 and 1813, the last years of the Napoleonic Wars, and the choreographer feels that it expresses the composer's ecstatic longing to reach the sublime future he was convinced lay ahead at the end of the dark period of the war. Music performed by The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink. A great admirer of George Balanchine, Hans van Manen was once told that Beethoven was one of the few composers whose work was impossible to choreograph. Van Manen rose to the challenge, creating Grosse Fuge to Beethoven's String Quartets, opus 133 in B flat major (Grosse Fuge) and the Cavatina from opus 130 in B flat major. The resulting work is an abstract ballet on van Manen's favourite theme - the tension and relationships between human beings. He once said, ''As soon as I place two people in an empty room I express a mood or a relationship.'' Set Design - Jean-Paul Vroom, Costume Design - Hans van Manen, Musicians - Quartetto Italiano With a good deal of ironic and sometimes sarcastic humour eroticism and aggression between man and women are expressed in the Piano Variations choreographed on Prokofiev's Sarcasms Op. 17, to Satie's Gnossiennes Nos. 1, 2 & 3 and Debussy's Etudes No. 12, 2 & 4. In the interview with van Manen he talks about the Piano Variations and his ideas in choreography.