On 1 October 2021, during the Dutch Dance Days Gala in Theater aan het Vrijthof, the VSCD Dance Awards, better known as The Swans, were presented. Choreographer duo Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten received the Gouden Zwaan (Golden Swan) from Dutch Minister of Culture Ingrid van Engelshoven, in recognition of their great contribution to Dutch dance. 

The Gouden Zwaan is awarded to a choreographer duo who have made an unmistakable contribution to Dutch dance since the start of their collaboration in 1995. The national and international reach of their work also played a role. That reach was immediately manifest in their trilogy Fra Cervello e Movimento (Between Brain and Movement). Since then, their work has been an unremitting quest for the intuitive body and its motives. For their internationally successful dance productions, Emio Greco | Pieter C. Scholten received the Zwaan Most Impressive Dance Production twice: for La Divina Commedia: HELL (2006) and ROCCO (2011). A third, Gouden Zwaan, honours the extensive repertoire of more than 25 years that expanded their boundaries to opera, music and film.

The jury: "Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten rebel against the view of the body as subordinate to the mind. Our thinking needs the body as an inexhaustible source of experience and knowledge. Their performances bear witness to this constant search for the embodied experience that precedes language. In recent decades, the choreographies of Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have proved to be a rich source for formulating a new dance vocabulary, by constantly exploring the theatrical space between meaning and form. For them, the dancer's body is a tabula rasa that, in each performance, traces a course around the question of what it means to be human. The intensity of their artistry led the jury to award them the Gouden Zwaan."

During the Nederlandse Dansdagen, Redo Ait Chitt takes a look behind the scenes and captures it on camera. In the episode of 3 October, he interviews Emio Greco about receiving the Golden Swan and the secret of their 26-year collaboration: the Clash.

You can watch the video with English subtitles on Vimeo.

WATCH HERE