DUTCH CHOREOGRAPHER Rudi van Dantzig's childhood experiences in the second world war inform most of his work. But not his interpretation of Shakespeare's much-loved Romeo and Juliet.
Like many Amsterdam children in 1944, he was evacuated to the countryside. He lived with a large farming family and, being a sensitive, shy child who'd grown accustomed to his parents' attentions, he cried himself to sleep almost every night for a year.
When the liberation came in the spring of 1945, a Canadian regiment set up camp in a nearby field. Van Dantzig met one of the soldiers and they struck up a brief sexual relationship. It inspired his best-selling first novel, For a Lost Soldier.
'I was a young boy - 11 - so for me he was a man,' the 73-year-old says. 'He was maybe 20, 21. People call it statutory rape, but I hate to call it that. They lived in tents, and one morning I came there and no one was there, and I didn't dare to ask.'
Van Dantzig returned home to Amsterdam soon after, confused about what had happened, and needing support. But his mother had just given birth to a second son. 'She couldn't give me any attention,' van Dantzig says. 'Everything was focused on my little brother.'
Has the story inspired any of his ballets? Inevitably, the feelings worked their way into some of them, he says. 'But not Romeo and Juliet - not that one.'