Amsterdam Dance Event is opening its 30th anniversary celebrations by taking one of classical dance’s most recognizable works somewhere it has never quite been before.
On Wednesday, October 21, Dutch National Ballet and ISH Dance Collective will transform Amsterdam’s iconic Gashouder with Swan Lake Remixed for ADE, an ambitious one-night production bringing classical ballet, hip-hop, electronic music and digital art together under one roof. The performance forms part of the 30 YEARS ADE Icon Series, a special cultural program celebrating three decades of Amsterdam Dance Event while looking toward the future of electronic music and its increasingly blurred relationship with other creative disciplines.
Rather than simply placing electronic music underneath a familiar ballet, Swan Lake Remixed for ADE reimagines the language and themes of the original work for a contemporary audience. Dancers from Dutch National Ballet and its Junior Company will perform alongside members of ISH Dance Collective and established guest dancers representing different corners of the dance world. The result promises to be a collision of movement, sound and visual art designed specifically for the industrial scale of the Gashouder.
At the heart of the production remain the themes that have helped Swan Lake endure for nearly 150 years: longing, freedom, temptation and the struggle between darkness and light. But within the context of ADE, those ideas take on a distinctly modern dimension. Questions surrounding identity, personal freedom and the choices that shape who we become sit at the center of the new interpretation, giving the centuries-old story an unexpected connection to contemporary club and youth culture.
The collaboration also continues a creative relationship between Dutch National Ballet and ISH Dance Collective that has already produced projects including GRIMM and Dorian. Over the past decade, the two companies have explored what happens when the precision and tradition of classical ballet meet the energy and physical vocabulary of hip-hop and street dance. Swan Lake Remixed takes that relationship to another level, placing it inside one of Amsterdam’s most recognizable electronic music venues during the biggest week on the city’s dance music calendar.
That setting could prove just as important as the choreography itself. The circular, industrial architecture of the Gashouder has long been synonymous with large-scale electronic music experiences, particularly during ADE. Bringing Dutch National Ballet into the venue creates a striking reversal of expectations: rather than bringing club culture into a traditional theater, the production brings ballet directly into a space deeply embedded within Amsterdam’s electronic music identity.
The scale of the project also represents a first. Swan Lake Remixed for ADE marks the first collaboration of this magnitude between Amsterdam Dance Event, Gashouder, Dutch National Ballet, ISH Dance Collective and concept and production agency XSAGA. Each organization brings a different creative language to the production, reflecting the broader philosophy behind ADE’s anniversary programming: connecting institutions, artists and audiences that might ordinarily occupy very different worlds.
There is also a remarkable collection of milestones surrounding the performance. ADE celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026, while Dutch National Ballet and ISH Dance Collective mark 10 years of collaboration. XSAGA celebrates its 25th anniversary, and the production arrives on the eve of another major landmark: 150 years since the first performance of Swan Lake in 1877.
Those anniversaries make the production particularly fitting for the 30 YEARS ADE Icon Series. Rather than focusing solely on nostalgia, the series is intended to explore the relationship between electronic music’s history and its future—connecting established institutions and cultural icons with new generations, emerging talent and evolving forms of artistic expression.
That philosophy has increasingly become part of ADE itself. While the festival and conference remain rooted in electronic music, its cultural footprint now stretches well beyond clubs, DJ booths and conference rooms. Museums, orchestras, visual artists, filmmakers and other creative disciplines have steadily become part of the week, illustrating just how deeply electronic music has become intertwined with Amsterdam’s wider cultural landscape.
With Swan Lake Remixed for ADE, that evolution will be difficult to miss. Ballet dancers, hip-hop performers, electronic music and digital art will converge inside one of the city’s defining industrial spaces, using a nearly 150-year-old story as the foundation for something unmistakably contemporary.
For a festival celebrating 30 years of pushing electronic music forward, it is a fitting way to begin ADE 2026: not by choosing between tradition and innovation, but by putting them on the same stage and seeing what happens when they move together.
