Archives: Archived Performances

“The ballet has no narrative as such, but attempts to portray different states and situations as I remember them from my youth. It was often a struggle.

Loneliness and shyness, lack of ability against bigger, hairier and stronger comrades. At the same time a struggle to be included, to not be spit on and misjudged by these self same comrades. In addition the very anxiety ridden but still clearly self evident struggle to experience love, which then became completely different than one imagined, which in turn brought a feeling of shame about all the previous expectations one had about love. A struggle to broaden one’s reality, a will to impress and the requisite fear to make a fool of oneself. And mixed with all this, an often violent joy at being able to experience the adventure of growth and existence.”

Mats Ek

Having passed through the black and white film version of his disillusionment, the protagonist finds his way back to life in full color.

The ballet is a political allegory based on the old legend of St. George And The Dragon, in which the hero saves the princess from the impending violence of the brutal dragon.

In this version of the saga, St. George is depicted as the western hero who conquers and plunders foreign countries to win their riches. Here this isvisited mainly upon the Dragon and the Princess, who act as metaphors for the conquests of the west.

The setting for Full Moon is a civilized social gathering, an elegant cocktail party. But behind the sophisticated veneer, ancient primitive lust grows among those gathered, all under the light of the full moon.

The Kiss, created by Luc Bouy, longtime dancer and choreographer with the Cullberg Ballet, revolves around the cyclical nature of human life. A life bookended by birth to death, constituted by relationships within that given timeframe.

Mats Ek’s Soweto (1977) is one of the company’s most performed works and was considered a classic on arrival. The work is a protest against racial oppression, inspired by the Soweto uprising in South Africa in June of 1976.

In the spring of that year students in the Sowetan township began demonstrating against the institution of Afrikaans as the main language to be used in schools. The police responded with violence and hundreds were killed. The Soweto uprising became the prelude to a series of increasingly violent revolts throughout South Africa, spurring on the ensuing dissolution of the apartheid regime and the institution of a democratic government in 1994.

The entire company danced in Soweto, the choreography providing opportunities for multiple variations and solos for each dancer. Themes included joy and sorrow, hope and fear, cohesion and despair. These were choreographically articulated as entangled and intertwingeld in much the same way they are in life.

Of particular interest was the role of African mother, from whom the group draw strength and inspiration. A life affirming old matriarch who unwaveringly urges and supports the young people to continue their struggle for freedom.

At age 69, Birgit Cullberg originated the role at the premiere of Soweto, and continued to dance in the work until she was 78 years old. In 1986 she danced her final performance of the role at a charity gala for Amnesty International at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, Sweden.

The music for Soweto was comprised of a carefully compiled mix of modern pop music.

“The ballet is built on the gradual rise in the music from pianissimo to a thundering forte. At the same time the number of dancers grows, but they all move in their own way and follow different rhythms in the music. They are strangers, without contact with one another. Suspicion, misunderstanding and aggression grow and further develop into violence between them. What I want to try to bring out is that people’s ignorance of each other’s different environments, religion and culture often leads to enmity and violence. While there are also groups that work for peace on earth, power and money still lie with the most aggressive among us. “

– Birgit Cullberg

Created for Nederlands Dans Theater, Stoolgame premiered at the Stadsschouwbourg in Amsterdam on the 18th of July 1974, with the subtitleThe Loner. It is this self same figure that the piece explores, a character who decides to forgo the agreements of their immediate culture, paying the price of expulsion for so doing.

.. your eyes was a duet inspired by Cesare Pavese’s poem When Death Comes, It Will Have Your Eyes (Italian: Verrá la morte e avrá i tuoi occhi).

Music comprised of pan flute by Gheorghe Zamfir.

“Explaining ones own ballet is a most dangerous endeavor. Allow me to define. There are certainly two ways to approach choreography: one intellectual and rational, and another, more intuitive. In the matter of Night Shadow, I think I used the latter approach. Night Shadow is about violence and aggression, but also about what triggers this violence. I have used a specific decor to enclose the choreography itself, to inscribe the ballet in a confined room with insurmountable limits. The music reflects this decor: itsrepetition traps the dancers in a system and forces them to react viscerally, to catch it or to push it away. “

– Ulysses Dove

“In our time, the family is an institution that often disintegrates or changes form. But in previous generations, especially the bourgeois Victorian period, the family had a strong cohesive force that had a great influence on people’s lives. Some believe it still does today.

This ballet is a depiction of four people’s family conflicts.The father is an officer concerned with keeping up appearances, as he makes his livelihood through war. He drinks to allay his fears. The mother is brought up in the ideal of purity, in other words that sex is dirty and dangerous. The daughter feels trapped and longs for love. Her boyfriend is the son of a poor. A conflict arises between these four disparate people, who are in actuality complete strangers to one another, despite their strong love. While interest in these types of family conflicts has been heightened by writers like Lars Norén and psychologists like Alice Miller, the plot of this ballet is completely independent and partially based on memories of my mother, who had experiences from the Victorian era. “

– Birgit Cullberg

“The Second String Quartet was Leoš Janáček’s last complete work, written shortly before his death in 1928. The music is a spontaneous expression of his feelings for Kamila Stösslová, a married woman forty years his younger, whom Janáček had met in 1917. While it remains doubtful whether Janáček’s feelings were reciprocated, given his unhappy marriage, where the loss of two children played a major role, the connection with the younger Stösslová nevertheless provided for a rebirth of his creative power. It gave him great happiness in his final years of life. Kamila died seven years after Janáček, at forty three years of age. “

– Christopher Bruce

Even the most beautiful houses collapse. Men, like rocks, erode. Beautiful women, like fairies, get wrinkles. But life always begins anew, conquering all loneliness and sorrow. In every life there was always, once, a house.

Mats Ek on The Rite of Spring:

“Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinski, premiered in Paris in 1913. It was a major scandal that triggered indignation among the audience, in which the rage of these gatekeepers of the status quo sounded like the squeals of stuck pigs. Shortly afterwards however, their shouts were turned to cheers and Stravinsky was carried on the shoulders of the jubilant crowd to the Arc de Triomphe.

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is perhaps the most important musical work in the 20th century to date. Since its inception, it has constantly attracted new interpreters. His music is a staple that is enough for everyone, it never ceases to inspire.

Stravinsky himself had no aesthetic or philosophical guidelines while he wrote The Rite of Spring. He also did not want to use Russian folklore or local color in the tonal language. Instead, he simply ‘wrote down what he heard’.

He had a vision in which he had saw a girl dancing in fire. In the sparsely worded synopsis, he described an ancient peasant society in which a bride is chosen to be married in the spring time. She becomes a sacrificial figure by dancing herself to death.

Her death was a prerequisite or condition for spring. Death becomes resurrection at the same time as existence is reordered through the changing of the seasons.I have not felt bound to make The Rite of Spring in a predetermined way, but tried to shape what I saw from my inner vision as I heard the music. For me, it is about change and about the cost of this change.”

François Verrets It’s Coming, It’s Coming is about the expression of power. Its mystery, its contradictions, its violence, its stagnation and the eventual decay so often associated with it. Power’s exaggerations, its fragility and, finally, its inevitable and gradual fall.

The music was specially composed by Jac Berrocal with JF Pauvros for bass guitar and the music group Catalogue.

Original title: The 30th of November 1901

Music:
Ragnar Grippe, Original Composition
Carl Nielsen, Symfoni nr. 5
Johann Strauss/Arnold Schönberg, Rosen aus dem Süden

The ballet Miss Julie is based on August Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same name, to date still one of the most performed plays in the world. The ballet premiered in Västerås on March 1st 1950, in what proved a breakthrough year for Cullberg, Miss Julie had been conceived and produced for a regional tour organized by the Swedish National Theater. The ballet would have far reaching consequences for her career, not least of which was the invitation to enter the closed domain of the Royal Opera House, so considered as it was at the time. This event was unique because it marked the invitation of two artists, Birgit Cullberg herself and the dancer Elsa-Marianne von Rosen, both of whom had not received their formal training at the Opera.

Elsa-Marianne obtained her dance education outside the Opera and Birgit Cullberg studied modern dance in England with Kurt Jooss in the 1930s and only after age 40 did she start to practice ballet. Miss Julie also placed Swedish ballet within a new international current in dance, exemplified by Roland Petit’s ballet Carmen, itself having spearheaded a new ballet way of creating and articulating ballet. Indeed, it was Petits Carmen that served as catalyst for Cullberg’s creation of Miss Julie. She had seen the ballet in Paris in 1949, and saw in it a complete form of dance drama that reflected new realism in literature. A movement drama depicting characters of depth and revealing a realism as yet unseen in ballet till then. Gone were nymphs, tulle,fairy tales, spectacle and fireworks. Instead the dance would move past the proscenium and into the audience, altering them.

Cullberg’s Interpretation of Miss Julie is a depiction of the vulnerability of an an odd man. Griped by an awful loneliness, in which birthright and wealth help little to none, is the strongest current in this work. It provides a dimension of depth which balances the fixed choreographic structure, more varied and saturated with effects as it was than any other Swedish ballet at the time.

In Miss Julie worlds collide: an aristocratic, refined and debauched one exemplified by the Countess’ daughter Julie juxtaposed with the primitive, slightly rough around the edges but also vital subject represented by Jean, Kristin and the farmers. Cullberg combined these elements, the free or modern and classical dance techniques when articulating these divergent worlds. The aristocratic refinement of the title role is expressed in the point shoe technique of classical ballet. While Julie dances en point, a sharp contrast is drawn by the grounded quality of the other dancers. The role of Julie was first danced by a young Elsa-Marianne von Rosen, and became for her a stepping stone into the international dance world. Jean was originally danced by Julius Mengarelli, on loan from the Opera. This role has since been danced by some of the world’s foremost dancers including Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nurejev, Flemming Flindt, Niklas Ek.

Anne-Marie Lagerborg, also on loan from the Opera at the time of originating the role of the housekeeper Kristin, would go on to lead to a lifelong collaboration with Birgit Cullberg. She eventually left the Opera in 1967 as a founder and eventual director until 1975. Anne-Marie Lagerborg was initially responsible for setting Miss Julie on other companies around the world. After Lagerborg’s death in 1988 the assignment was taken over by, among others, Jeremy Leslie-Spinks, Gunilla Roempke, Lena Wennergren-Juras and Ana Laguna.

Miss Julie became a modern Swedish classic and has been performed numerous times all over the world by various dance companies including: American Ballet Theater, The Royal Swedish Ballet, The Finnish National Ballet, and in Oslo, Copenhagen and Poland. It is the most performed work in Birgit Cullberg’s canon.

In 1980, SVT produced Miss Julie for television with Niklas Ek, Galina Panova and the Cullberg Ballet. In 1981, Rudolf Nureyev was an invited guest artist at The Cullberg Ballet, performing Miss Julie at the Circus Theater in Stockholm.

(Source: Birgit Cullberg, Erik Näslund, Norstedts Förlag, 1978)

Ibsen’s Peer Gynt helps his mother Aase into eternity with a tall tale. During the wild telling of the story he conjures, she dies. Birgit Cullberg’s pas de deux Mother Aase depicts mother Aase’s death as the schism between a son and his mother.

Per and mother Aase pick up on one another’s movements as though they were intricately connected. In her illness, Åse’s movements appear like those of a dying animal. Both mother and son are strong and their bond is solid, like cords that unite, but also strangle.They rock each other to sleep. Per rocks his mother Aase to death. He mourns, forever losing a piece of himself. Then, the air around him clears it is once again easy to breathe. In grief there is also great relief.

Perhaps it is not a death but a birth Birgit Cullberg wishes to depict. Perhaps it is allegory about the necessity to cut the umbilical cord during the first major crisis of life – the becoming of the adult self.

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.

Per Jonssons’ Schakt (Shaft) (1983) was his graduation production for the University of Dance’s Choreographic Studies program and went on to became the work that launched his career. Dancers from the Royal Swedish Ballet danced the work. Schakt (Shaft) is defined by a strict, formal musical buildup stemming from the clear structure of the score. There seems an invisible network running through the piece, with dance, music and scenography forming a closed circuit that results in a singular esthetic expression. SVT recorded the work in 1987 with dancers from both the Royal Swedish Ballet and the Cullberg Ballet.

At a railway station somewhere in Sweden, a Swedish couple meets some immigrants. Through the sharing of dances native to their respective countries an alliance is born. But suddenly in the midst of the celebration, a shot rings out.

Birgit Cullberg’s classical Adam and Eve (1961) counts as one of Cullberg Ballet’s all time audience favorites. The illustration of a dance lift featured in the piece became the Cullberg Ballet’s logo and was seen widely on posters and in programs.

Birgit Cullberg choreographed the creation myth of Adam and Even in her own idiosyncratic way, featuring a plethora of humorous elements and striking situations.

The ballet is a pas de deux about creation, love and expulsion from the garden of Eden. It begins with the moment when the first human being peers, blinking, toward the light. The male figure Adam finds himself no longer alone and after their first sensual encounter, the masculine-feminine conjunction is revealed, for better or for worse.

Adam and Eve was danced to Hilding Rosenberg’s Concerto per orchestra d’archi.

Adam and Eve was created for the American Ballet Theater in 1961. The original title was simply Eden.

What is a park? Something between jungle and garden, nature and culture, the wild and the tame. A human? If park could be perceived as an image of the soul, as an inner landscape, then yes a lot can happen there. And not always what you expect.

Mats Ek on The Park:

“A park: the lungs of a city, a patch of disciplined nature with straight lines and vegetation trimmed like geometric figures, friendly and lush greenery coupled with messy angles and hidden corners. A park, between jungle and garden, between nature and culture, between the wild and the tamed. Much like a human being. The park could be seen as a picture of the soul, of the innards of a human being.”

Mats Ek believes that these reflections began on one of the many mornings he passed Humlegården (a large open green area in central Stockholm) on his way to work over a twelve year period. The Park is made up of nine episodes, nine different short ballets with varying characters and content, comprising pieces of our lives.

“In all the scenes there is a charged relationship between destructive forces and life affirming ones, moving forward with different emphasis on one or the other,” says Mats Ek. The Park as an entity also changes its meaning,at once a forest but then the trunks of trees can transform into the pillars of a ballroom. One can see The Park as a continuation of the work Eldstad, where the setting is the only cohesive element, while its significance is ambiguousand multifaceted. Where Eldstad was open for a continuation, a work in progress, The Park, on the other hand, was from the outset a unified entity.

Marie-Louise de Geer Bergenstråhle created the scenography, the sixth collaboration between herself and Mats Ek.

The composers whose music is used as many as The Park’s episodes: Camille Saint-Saens, Ingvar Lidholm, Mikis Theodorakis, Richard Wagner, Jean Sibelius, Arne Nordheim, Carl Nielsen and George Elkin.

The environment, the park, is the only unifying element. In it two figures appear consistently: an Edward the Black Prince character, a classic embodiment of a romantic prince seeking his bride to be, and a municipal worker who sets things right and tidies up.

Water, we have asked for water
And you, oh God, give us wind
And you turn your back on us
As if you did not want to listen to us

Thus is the lament that the Catalan people address to their higher powers. Jardi Tancat is the Catalan title for a closed garden. The plot of the ballet is based on ancient Spanish folklore depicting the struggle of its people to sow, plant and harvest in the dry Catalan soil. Their labor goes oft unrewarded yet they do not give up.

The Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato danced with the Cullberg Ballet from 1980-1981 and thereafter with the Nederlands Danstheater. Created in 1983 Jardi Tancat, was Duato’s first work, later having its Swedish premiere with the Cullberg Ballet in 1988. It was well received and appreciated by both press and audience alike.

Six dancers depict the Catalan people’s arduous labor with the barren earth and their lamentations to the higher powers over the drought. The work was accompanied by singer Maria Del Mar Bonet, who sang traditional Catalan workers’ songs. Nacho Duato himself created the minimalist scenography and simple costumes.

The hermit of San Clemente lived in a closet in the hermitage. The wardrobe limited his horizon. Legend has it that he died a thousand times under the watchful and tender eyes of the Virgin Mary.

Music:
Gioacchino Rossini, La Petite Messe Solennelle
John Lurie, Stranger Than Paradise

“Sophocles wrote his drama Antigone more than 2000 years ago. Still, this piece continues to be a vital basis to portray a current set of problems. The exact dramaturgy of Sophocles is not the important thing here. However, its dramatic core is essential, the conflict that arises when the ruler’s demands to maintain the law are set against the individual’s innermost desires.”

– Mats Ek

Antigone is fighting for the release of her captured brother. To the king, he is a dangerous rebel who must be neutralized. In the ballet, Antigone is personified by several women, each with a similar fate. Historically speaking it is only relatively recently that Greece emerged from a period of dictatorship, one in which the performance of Antigone was banned.

Som Antingone premiered in 1988 with The Stuttgart Ballet. It was a reworked version of Mats Eks Antigone (1979) featuring new music, costumes and scenography .

Music:
M Hadjidakis: Todays Sorrow, The Damned Ones, Swallow in the Cage

Great Solos 2:
Ta pirate ta provata
Publisher: EMI Columbia
14C054-70816

Great Solos 3:
(Missing title)
Publisher: EMI Columbia
14C054-70818

Greek Folk Music:
Hassaposéviko
Violin solo, 2 minutesPublisher: Caprice Cap 1191

Home Coming:
Manos Hadjidakis
Today’s Sorrow
The Damened Ones
Swallow in The Cage
EMI Columbia
2J062-70236

The Hard April of -45
Manos Hadjidakis
Eyα Ματόκλαδά Σου Λάµπουν (English title: Your Eyelids Shine)
Minos MSM 221

Zambetas plays Hadjidakis
Street of Dreams
Minerva 22014

Christopher Bruce (UK) was a dancer and choreographer for Ballet Rambert in London.

Ghost Dances takes place in a South American milieu, an allegorical perspective on life and death inspired by and derived from Native American cultures. Bruce referred to Chilean activist Victor Jara’s widow as a source of inspiration for the ballet. He dedicated Ghost Dances to the people of South America who have been continually oppressed since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. The work utilizes South American folk music performed by the well-known Chilean group Inti-Illimani. Much of the evocative mood in Ghost Dances is derived from the music.

It was Mats Ek, artistic director of the Cullberg Ballet, who while on a trip to Holland saw a performance by Ghost Dances (originally premiered in 1981)and became interested in Bruce’s work. Ek contacted Christopher Bruce in London to ask him whether he might set Ghost Dances on the Cullberg Ballet.

Bruce says of Ghost Dances that despite it being a game of life and death, it is ultimately the will to live that is its driving force and main thematic thrust.

The work was performed by eleven dancers from the Cullberg Ballet with original scenography by Christopher Bruce and costumes by Belinda Scarlett.

Music:
Inti Illimani, South American folk songs