Coppelius

The piece is a modern version of the classical ballet Coppelia (Arthur Saint-Léon and Léo Delibes, 1870) It is both a social satire and a depiction of the predicament of the aging artist. Present in Coppelius is a recurrent motif in Birgit Cullberg’s canon, namely a revolt against the confinements of bourgeois life. Here this struggle is brought to life through the setting of a dollhouse containing stereotypically repressed people. The work could be seen to mirror Cullberg’s personal revolt against her upbringing in a bourgeois home in Nyköping, Sweden. In addition, Coppelius also reveals Cullberg’s sense of satire and burlesque, but interestingly much of the grand gestures and movements which came to represent her signature have been left aside in this work.