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 2007 he founded dance company Another Kind of Blue (AKOB), initially under the name Area 51 and in the following years choreographed for Korzo and Introdans. His works have been performed at festivals such as Lowlands (2009 and 2011), Oerol (2013 and 2014) and the Parade (2014). In addition to AKOB's regular program, in the following years the company also performed for international organizations such as Mastercard, IBM, the royal family of Abu Dhabi and others. And also at events such as the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Context, Moscow (2013), the VII Gala International de Ballet de Buenos Aires (2016), Youth America Grand Prix Gala (New York), Kuopio Dance Festival, Holland Dance Festival and Festival de Nederlandse Dansdagen.
Great fame followed when Middendorp was asked to perform on the TV show America's Got Talent in 2014, where he reached the finals. This was followed by Middendorp's company AKOB's first full-length show Blue Technology. Two years later Middendorp appeared in another talent show, this time Britain's Got Talent, where he reached the semi-finals.
In the Netherlands, AKOB created the new choreography Painting (2017) for Introdans, followed by the full-length program Flirt With Reality, which premiered at the Zuiderstrandtheater in The Hague in October 2018. That same year, AKOB took Flirt With Reality to London, where they performed in Sadler's Wells. A year later, Middendorp was allowed to perform at an event organized by fashion brand Hermès in Paris with his piece Flyland in a Room.
Just before the corona pandemic broke out in 2020, AKOB created the new piece World Leaders in co-production with Introdans for the show GEK GEZICHT, a full-length production that also featured Middendorp's earlier pieces Face Machine and Blue Journey. And then in October 2020, Middendorp introduced AKOB's stunning virtual reality choreography HandsON in coproduction with Festival de Nederlandse Dansdagen Digitaal. In the following year, 2021, AKOB performed with the new piece The Great Escape for the royal family on Koningsdag in Eindhoven, and a few months later it was at the World Expo in Dubai with Airman. Also in the same year, the new full-length performance WAVE premiered.