From the 1960s onward, van Dantzig choreographed more than fifty ballets, most of them on contemporary themes and most of them for his home company. Combining both classical and modern dance techniques, his ballets are expressionistic and fraught with symbolism, usually displaying psychological conflicts within a principal character. Basic themes are acceptance of life's imperfections and acceptance of death as the inevitable outcome of life's struggles. The former is central to his best-known work, "Monument for a Dead Boy" (1965), a portrait of an adolescent destroyed by his unacceptable sexuality. The latter is demonstrated in "Four Last Songs" (1977), an ensemble piece that is generally considered his best work. In it "he transformed Strauss's meditation on death into an understated love poem which four couples are parted in duets by a sympathetic messenger of death."