Fågelperspektiv (Bird’s Eye View) was to became Birgit Cullberg’s last work for the company. Here Cullberg returned to the theme of ‘love in the shadow of war’, to the tension between war mongers and those who oppose, those who protect the living. Fågelsperspektiv is a story about a nun who falls in love with a nobleman. Their love story plays itself out both through the nobleman’s inward struggles of conscience as well as on the battlefield, in brothels, and in the nests of power. The characters in the ballet borrow their expressions from various birds – the nuns from penguins, the aristocracy from cranes, the soldiers from birds of prey, and the brothel girls from parrots.
“I recently saw a group of penguins on TV,” said Birgit Cullberg, “they are so trapped and anxious.” Fågelperspektiv would not be the first time Cullberg had portrayed human characteristics, and their frailties, by utilizing animal movements. She had experimented with this transfer in Tuppfjät, a work created shortly after returning from working with Kurt Jooss in England (1939), as well as later in Månrenen made for The Royal Theater in Copenhagen (mid 1950s).
“Animals do not imagine, they have a natural expressiveness that is exciting and, in addition, somewhat touching. It is compelling to force oneself to transform the movements of the human body by borrowing from animals. The subsequent movements can be surprising and more directly articulated, through bypassing the general human expressions we are so used to.”A nun and a nobleman. Though it might seem like a fairy tale with roots in the lore of the Middle Ages, Birgit Cullberg posited that it is rather a fairy tale about and for all the ages. Knighthood remains a key typology of our collective imagination and we are still drawn to many of its ideals. To say nothing of the aristocrat – a modern day crane representing the elegant upper class, or the war mongers as modern day birds of pray. Both abound in recent history.