Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

Olga -
Tomorrow
I’ll Dance
(Olga - Morgen dans ik weer)
Sigma Pictures Productions
Netherlands
Writer/director Hans Hylkema
Producer Matthijs van Heijningen
Producer Guurtje Buddenberg
38 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
1953. Eight-year-old Olga de Haas is literally
picked off the street by the Russian ballet
teacher Sonia Gaskell. Eight years later, she
is a member of the corps de ballet of Gaskell’s
company. They move to Amsterdam, where
she explores the nightlife - a tough combination
with a heavy rehearsal schedule.
The leads in Swan Lake and Giselle are
now exclusively for the 20-year-old Olga,
who is acclaimed at an international ballet
concourse in Moscow. The press love the
beautiful young woman who combines the
arts and pop culture; her pictures are in all
the glossies.
Olga can hide her double life for the time
being but, under pressure, she develops
anorexia and alcohol addiction. She comes
late or not at all to daily rehearsals and,
when Gaskell has to leave the company,
she is personally affected. Her first serious
relationship - with barman Gerry - comes to
an end but she makes a miraculous comeback
and, despite a bad foot injury, performs
in 1969 with Rudolf Nureyev, a dream
come true. A year later, she collapses on
stage. After her recovery, she does not end
her career but declares, “Tomorrow I’ll
dance again.”
A new relationship and triumph on stage
in the role of Juliet follow, mixed with alcohol
and pills. When she performs Juliet for the
third time and stabs herself with the knife at
the end, there is a strong symbolic link with
her own life. The night after the premiere,
she collapses again.
In a nightmare, she is in the municipal
park and the characters from the ballets she
danced in are on an island. One of them, the
evil sorcerer Rothbard from Swan Lake, is a
bird with the face of her father. He beckons
her and automatically she wades through
the water to him…
On the island she collapses, exhausted.
Olga de Haas lacks the will and the strength
to go on. Two years later, in 1978, Julia,
Giselle and Odette, the Swan Queen, die in
the exhausted and wrecked body of Olga de
Haas, aged 34.
Dance gave her wings; life broke them.
Director’s statement
I am interested in biographies of people set
against the background of a specific era.
The main character in this biopic is Holland’s
first real ballet star, Olga de Haas,
who lived the turbulent life of a pop star in
the 1960s and 1970s, when youth culture
first emerged.
The world of classical and modern dance
is fascinating because dancers defy gravity,
and everybody wants to fly. But there is a
reverse side to this: dancers have to take
care of their bodies and that demands a disciplined
way of life. Olga is torn between
that ascetic soberness and the temptations
of the exciting nightlife that a girl her age
wants to enjoy.
This is the drama of the main character,
who also has to deal with struggles within
the National Ballet. The look of the film is a
combination between a classical editing
style for the dance sequences and a more
documentary approach for the daily-life
scenes in the swinging 1960s.
Writer/director Hans Hylkema
Born in 1946, Hans Hylkema worked as a
cameraman after attending the Dutch Film
Academy, then went on to become a director
of features, shorts and documentaries.
His feature films include the
Dutch/German/Belgian/Indonesian coproduction
Oeroeg (1993), a period film
shot entirely in Indonesia; Juliet’s Secret
(1987), about a Turkish schoolgirl living in
the Netherlands and playing the female
lead in Romeo and Juliet; The Kingmaker
Connection (1983), a thriller about a
hushed-up Dutch political scandal from
the 1950s; and the feature-length TV
movie Soekarno Blues, about a fictional
meeting between Queen Juliana and
Indonesia’s first president.
Hylkema has also directed a number of
acclaimed music documentaries, including
Last Date – Eric Dolphy (1991), which was
released in the US.