Marne van Opstal is an international choreographer, movement director and performing artist born in (1990) Velden, the Netherlands. He received his early training at the ‘Vooropleiding Dans’ in Venlo under the direction of Liesbeth Wiertz. As a twelve-year-old he performed with ‘Introdans voor de jeugd’ in a program called ‘Mmmozart’. During the dance competition ‘Tanzolymp’ in Berlin, Van Opstal won a special prize for ‘up-and-coming talent’.
After graduating from high school he went on to study at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. During his training he received an apprenticeship with Introdans. He joined the program ‘Notenkraker en de Muizenkoning’ of the Dutch National Ballet and went on to dance in ‘Twools 11’ by Scapino Ballet Rotterdam with the work ‘Focus’. Focus was specially created by Ed Wubbe for the televised program ‘The evening of the young dancer’, which was a competition between the dance academies in The Netherlands. Marne ultimately won the competition.
He went on to join Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in 2009 after which he continued with Nederlands Dans Theater 1 until Iate 2020. He created with and performed in works by renowned choreographers, including; Jiri Kylian, Paul Lightfoot & Sol Leon, Ohad Naharin, Hans van Manen, Franck Chartier, Gabriella Carrizo, Crystal Pite, Hofesh Shechter, Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar, Johan Inger, Marco Goecke, Alexander Ekman, Ivan Perez among others. During his time the company toured worldwide to famous and renowned theatres, for example the Sydney Opera House, The Kennedy Center, The Bolshoi Theatre. In 2011 his home province of Limburg awarded him the Limburg Culture Award. Marne was nominated by the VSCD (Dutch Theatre Association) for the Silver Swan Award: the ‘most impressive dance achievement 2014’ for his role in ‘Uprising & In your rooms’ by Hofesh Shechter.
Marne’s interest in choreography started at a very young age, creating yearly for school performances. In tandem with his career as a professional dancer Marne started to further develop his choreographic skills. Starting with his participation in the annual benefit event ‘Switch’ by Nederlands Dans Theater. Imre and Marne created their first work ‘Arm’s Length’ for Switch after which they created ‘LiNK’ (2014) and ‘John Doe’ (2015) for their talent development program called ‘Up & Coming Choreographers’. In 2017 they debuted with ‘The Grey’ for NDT2’s regular programming and continued to create ‘Take Root’ (2019) for NDT1. Take Root was nominated by the VSCD for the Swan Award: ‘most impressive dance production 2019’.
Since 2020 Imre and Marne are fully focused on their choreographic career and have created works for various international dance companies. Creating ‘Baby dont hurt me’ (2021) for NDT1, ‘Eye Candy’ (2021) for Rambert Dance Company, ‘The little man’ (2022) for National Theater Mannheim, ‘I’m afraid to forget your smile’ (2022) for the Hessian State Ballet, ‘Heart Drive’ (2022) for Ballet BC, ‘Mommy, Look!’ for Ballett Theater Basel (2023) and ‘To Kingdom Come’ for GoteborgOperans Danskompani (2023).
Marne has been part of the faculty of the Nederlands Dans Theater Summer Intensive, both teaching repertoire as well as creating new work on the participants. He worked intensively with the students of the Bachelor program at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague resulting in a new work. He continues to give workshops and sessions in various school and programs.
Marne was a member of the jury for the Rotterdam International Duet Choreography Competition (RIDCC) in both 2021 and 2022.
