Archives: Archived Performances

“I will call a meeting to find out what has happened to my country. They have bound us in poverty, brother, how shall we find our way out of this labyrinth…”

These are a few lines from Toto Bissainthe’s album Cante Haiti, which is the basis for Rassemblement. The piece depicts how the people of Haiti gather and unite forces against the oppression of their ruthless rulers. They draw strength from their religious beliefs as well as the beauty and sheer force of their natural environs, a means to bolster their fight for liberation. But above all else it is the music, revolutionary songs dating back to the days of slavery, that give them strength.

Inspired by these songs of revolution, Duato attempts to give shape to the Haitians’ struggle for independence, justice and improved quality of life.

Combined with interests in romanticism, particularly around themes of nature, and lyricism, Duato adds to the work elements from the native religions and local natural ecosystems. The intersection of these thematic elements with the songs of revolution are cornerstones in how Duato presents his interpretation of the Haitian fight for independence.The sets were designed by the artist Walter Nobbe, a longtime collaborator of Jiří Kylián at the Nederlands Dans Theater. Here his beautiful, imaginative backdrops provide the frame for Nacho Duato’s choreography.

Rassemblement was created for the Cullberg Ballet, and had its premiere on the 27th of February, 1990 at the Hjalmer Bergman Teater in Örebro, Sweden.

A work for three dancers which also contains text, voice, and piano music. Premiere with the Ballet Frankfurt in 1988. Cullberg Ballet premiered the work in 1990.

“Flykt (Flight) is a piece that moves in an inner space, a landscape. The place and landscape are clear, but who populates it? That is decided in the moment of creation, in the generosity between the Cullberg Ballet dancers and myself. The title Flykt (Flight) is the reference point from which the creation takes place. I never try to completely determine a meaning or narrative for a piece.

Rather, the whole process is more about searching and locating. Flykt (Flight) is like the colors of the night, with myriad shadows and shapes not clearly definable. It therefore has multiple meanings – to flee, to seek refuge, an action linked to fear, to obligation and to death. There are those who eschew and abscond. There are those who are tangible, concrete and reliable. There are those who flee and those who stay. “

Jean-Pierre Perreault

Creatures in light and darkness.
Or in between.
Together, they conjure up a temporary system, one reminiscent of a human being.

The ballet is dedicated to Anders Ek and was created after Gamla Barn, the ballet that Mats Ek dedicated to Birgit Cullberg.

Music:
Kevin Volans: White man sleeps 5
Samuel Barber: Adagio
Gustav Holst: Intermezzo
Fläskkvartetten: So long bleeding
Tor Aulin: The housewife and the child
Anton Webern: Six trifles (the last two)
Jean Sibelius: Andante festivo
Heino Eller: Lento assai poco rubato
Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze
Charles Ives: The Unanswered question

The title derives from Schönberg’s music Verklärte Nacht (1909) which in turn is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel. The music for the piece is from the orchestra arrangement dated 1945.

The story is that of a woman who must tell her lover that she is expecting a child with her husband, whom she no longer loves. Her lover’s comfort and understanding of her difficult situation makes her see the future with newfound hope. They regard the unborn child as the result of their mutual love.

Jiří Kylián, choreographer of Transfigured Night, is regarded as one of the world’s most renowned and sought after choreographers. Born and raised in former Czechoslovakia he fled 1968, eventually ending up in the ranks of the famous Stuttgart Ballet during its golden era in the 1960s, presided over by John Cranko. He began as a dancer but soon afterward began to display his talents as a choreographer. In 1973 he choreographed his first work for the Nederlands Dans Theater where he went on to became artistic director from 1975-1999 and its main choreographer until 2009. Nederlands Dans Theater is to this day still considered one of the most prominent dance companies in the world, in large part due to Kylián’s long artistic leadership and immense choreographic output.

Transfigured Night is characteristic of Jiří Kylián’s choreographic language, containing as it does a wealth of emotions, beautiful and refined movements, and a unique form of evocative abstraction, all set to the music of Arnold Schönberg.

Gamla Barn (Old Children), created in 1989, was dedicated to Birgit Cullberg. Though not expressly about Birgit Cullberg, Gamla Barn was inspired by situations and characters where the childish in the elderly and the elderly in the child are the primary leitmotif. Some animals also appear in the piece.

Fläskkvartetten wrote the majority of the music and against the backdrop of their raw, sad, and powerful songs, emerge romantic evergreens with their sweetness and beauty.

With the piece Overgrown Path, choreographer Jiří Kylián embarked on a new path. It is the first ballet he created where the choreography was not exclusively based on the music but, in addition, on the circumstances that lead to the music’s creation. Inspired by Janácek’s intimate piano suite from the years around 1902, the darkest time in the composer’s life, there are movements in Overgrown Path that depart from the musical structure to seemingly align with the underlying emotional tone.

At nearly fifty, Janácek’s beloved daughter Olga died. Herself only twenty one at the time, she had suffered a protracted period of illness. In addition, a few years earlier, his son Vladimir had been abducted. Olga’s death left tangible traces in all of Janácek’s works from around the turn of the century, especially the opera Jenufa, the small cantata Elegy on the Death of Daughter Olga and the piano suite The Overgrown Path. The latter work consists of tenindependent pieces, some for harmonium, which were joined together into a piano suite.

A highly autobiographical piece of music, the composer seems to be looking back and reflecting on his own life. The suite resounds with memories. The musings, much like a walk along an overgrown path, act as memories entangled in the foliage of the time. The years have changed the meaning of life’s events, their value and emotional charge. Some events appear with sharper contours, others have lost their content altogether. Jiří Kylián expresses this in his choreography without attempting to depict a narrative of Janácek’s life. “The only autobiographical element is that I know Janácek’s homeland well,” says Jiří Kylián. (Like Janácek, Kylian was born and raised in Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic.)

The theme of Overgrown Path is life and death, two events that are prerequisites for one another. The work departs from the inexorable fact that life goes on when someone dies. The sorrow of death takes resounds in those closest to the departed. While in this inner orbit time stands still outside of it life carries on. This phenomenon can also be observed in less dramatic situations. For example, when engaged in discussion in a room where others are also involved in conversation, where those conversations might be about something as fundamental as life or death, it is nevertheless still your own words that seem most important. No matter how mundane they are.

“During the preparations, I had long discussions about the decor with Walter Nobbe,” says Jiří Kylián. “It was during the U.S. presidential election. And even though I knew how much was at stake in the election, still the scenography was the most important to me.”

This confluence between the private and the public is one of the cornerstones of Overgrown Path. “The given scene that the audience sees is just part of a much larger whole,” says Jiří Kylián, “what takes place on stage can not be separated from what is happening in the world outside. Therefore, the stage is occasionally filled with groups of dancers who act as messengers from other parts of the world. They bring their movements from this outside world and, subsequently, do not follow the musical logic internal to the piece. At the end of the piece a girl dies in the middle of the stage. The others continue to dance optimistically. Someone is gone. And so now then? It is not as cruel as it seems. That’s the way life is. I’ve experienced that myself. “

The eleventh and final scene is danced without audible music but it is based on Jenufa, Janácek’s opera contemporaneous to the piano suite. It can be assumed that he must also have had Jenufa in mind while working on the piano music. In Overgrown Path this interplay is woven precisely by the opera’s music being expressed only in the dancers’ movements, and notheard as such. It was important for Kylián to stitch the eleven scenes together into a unified whole, this being one reason why the dancers remain on stage between each piece of music.

“This ballet is extremely important to me,” says Kylián. “I will work with it for years until it becomes perfect. For me, this is the first time the premiere is not the most important thing.”

Overgrown Path is dedicated to Antony Tudor who, according to Kylián, is “one of the greatest choreographers of our time”. The two artists grew to have a special relationship after Tudor saw some of Kylián’s ballets in New York. “I had only seen a few of Tudor’s works,” says Jiří Kylián. “We met after one of our shows in New York and he was ecstatic. He said that I carried on his style and that I did things that he had always dreamed of doing. He has also worked a lot with Czech music and is in general strongly influenced by Czech culture, which is my background. His recognition made an extremely strong impression on me. It will give me strength in difficult times. “

Overgrown Path premiered with Nederlands Dans Theater in 1980.

Eldstad. A fireplace. A hearth. A city on fire. Mats Ek’s ballet encompasses all of these various meanings: a burning city with its deadly heat, a war, a place of despair and division.

Ek recounts that his initial inspiration for Eldstad came in the form of a photo in Dagens Nyheter (the Swedish national daily newspaper) in which four native Peruvians are seen dragging a corpse in a tarpaulin. Perhaps it is a known enemy, or maybe a stranger? Eldstad leaves it open to question.

In Eldstad’s third sequence we see these four characters, now soldiers, with the bundle between them. Suddenly the dead corpse unfolds from the tarpaulin, springing to life like a butterfly from its cocoon. Despite the inevitable pain of this becoming, her movements nonetheless convey a sense of hope, an embodied affirmation of life.

In Eldstad’s first sequence, we see a family dancing – mother, father, son and daughter. They try to remain together despite a chaos forced upon them through an external disaster. But, it is later revealed, this sense of calamity is one that they also have internalized. In their will to stay together there is thus another pressing quest, a necessity even, to break free.

In Eldstad’s second sequence, a young man and woman dance past each other. While seeking one another in the form of a pas de deux, they nonetheless never touch. “These two preceding scenes are linked to a choice of music”, says Mats Ek. To meet. To grow up. To become. It is on these thematic fragments that Eldstad has been constructed.

Two additional sequences have been added that depict the search for a similar vulnerability, belonging and affection. “A woman of moderation” refers both to women in boarding schools but also to vampires. The character of the runner is figure of altruism. While present, she is barely noticeable to others.

The dancing family and the young couple appear again – on the hunt or escaping something?

Music:
Philip Glass, Glassworks
D von Bauszner Drei Expressionen
Jean Sibelius Tuonelas svan

Much like the ballet Nomads, which preceded Stamping Ground by a year, it is inspired by the ritual dances of the Aborigines who reside in present day Australia. In the summer of 1980, choreographer Jiří Kylián visited the Aborigines while engaged in his personal search for renewal, “a rebirth  of dance”.

On Groote Eylandt, an island off the north coast of Australia, he experienced a ceremony in which almost all Aboriginal tribes participated. This provided a unique opportunity for Kylián to study their various dances. While each tribe has its own idiosyncratic movement vocabulary, they also share a common foundation or motif, that of stamping. The nomadic Aborigines initiate each new camp site with a kind of stampede dance intended to ward off evil spirits.

Dance conceived this way then has a spiritual and ritual dimension, while also being a means of personal communication. A dancer can be playful or challenging, but he never at the expense of their fellow dancers. This dance is firstly a group act, providing as it does enough flexibility for each individual to express their personality.

Unlike many forms of Western dance there is no one central soloist, profiled persona or character, or role division for the sake of hierarchy. Another striking feature of the aboriginal dances is their seemingly natural movement.

Although they are challenging and complex to perform, the dances have aself-evident logic and appear unmistakably clear. For example this is true of the sequences of mirrored movements, whereby some body parts move in the opposite direction to the others. Much like the Aborigines themselves, the traditional dances are intimately bound together with nature. The dancers often imitate kangaroos, emus and other animals. There is a complete balance between human, animal and natural ecosystem. Aboriginal rites of passage are earthbound, the dancers performing their movements close to the ground and with their backs bent backwards. And when they jump, they do so without first bending their knees and without a run up or approach.

“Just like a feather spirited away by the wind,” as Jiří Kylián put it. It is a strange sight when you get used to seeing something or someone dash away as we normally would. Stamping, jumping, animal imitations, mirrored movements, and the expressive power of the Aborigines in general, all inspired Jiří Kylián in the making of Stamping Ground. Yet Kylián has not copied their movements expressly. They regard their rites, rituals and dances as personal property and would never accept that they be plagiarized. And so while Kylián based the work on his impressions of their embodied practices, the idiom he develops is in his own choreographic signature. “Stamping Ground and Aboriginal dancing are two completely different things,” he says. “I did not travel to Australia to copy the indigenous people.”

A number of Aboriginal organizations have since accused Kylián of cultural appropriation writ large, a claim he firmly rejects. “I believe that different cultures can inspire each other. Although we could not speak each other’s languages, we could communicate through dance. And it should be possible to do so without adverse political implications. I am extremely well aware of the situation of the Aborigines. I know how they have to fight to defend their culture and their country and I do not hesitate for a moment to support their struggle. But I believe that a choreographer is a choreographer and not a politician. It is the choreographic, the dance that is my task. And that was the starting point for my work in Australia.”

Kylián’s encounter with the Aboriginal tribes marked the beginning of a longer search for a type of primordial power, for the core of his own personality.

Embarking on this journey via Stamping Ground and Nomads led Kylián to the insightful, self-reflective themes that are the hallmark of later pieces like Hearts Labyrinth. Kylián regarded Stamping Ground as an experiment. It is an exploration of the movements and patterns of communication emanating from each individual’s primordial instinct, the animal at the center of our human being.In Stamping Ground each dancer examines their surroundings and then marks their space in much the same way that animals mark their territories. It is only after the fifth solo that interaction between the dancers begins. They investigate each other with playful challenges and advances, a sort of morphology of horseplay. These power games are treated lightly in Stamping Ground, not intended to represent serious struggles for dominance.

Stamping Ground premiered on February 17, 1983 at Nederlands Dans Theater. Cullberg premiered the work in January of 1992 at Dansens Hus in Stockholm.

Folk music from Norrbotten (the northernmost county of Sweden) is the basis for this ballet. The piece has no definitive narrative structure but shifts instead between various events and situations in the everyday life of the people of Norrbotten. Hunting, work, isolation and loneliness, ‘log dancing’ (folk dance), love, and the short springtime to name a few. The actions of the piece take place against a painted backdrop depicting a summary view of the natural environs and forces that surround the people who live there. In På Norrbotten (Down North) is accompanied by traditional folk music arranged and played by JP Nyströms, a folk music group from Gällivare / Malmberget.

“The inspiration for På Norrbotten is the music,” said Mats Ek before the premiere. “I heard a compilation album of JP Nyströms. Later, I contacted them and together we chose the appropriate music for the piece from their repertoire.”

Carl Lagerqvist, a miner, composed one of the songs and developed two more. An additional three songs were by another local miner named Albert Israelsson.”

The piece is based on nine different dances. På Norrbotten never spills over into epic proportions. Ek chose instead to show in collage like form a slew of recognizable events and forces from everyday life in Norrbotten. Work, log dancing (folk dance), weddings, the short springtime, the collective community and the individual person for example.

As a brand, the name Nyström is well known to many accordionists and elementary school teachers. Nyström’s factory manufactured pianos and harmoniums. JP Nyström, an ancestor of the original manufacturer, utilized these instruments as well as violin, guitar, flute and bass. Karin Ek, a cousin of Mats and accomplished designer herself, created the aforementioned set, a large scale painting of a natural environment found in Norrbotten.

På Norrbotten premiered in 1985 at Malmberget’s sports hall in Gällivare. A stage was specially constructed for the performance. JP Nyströms played live at several of the Cullberg Ballet’s performances, including in Stockholm, and on tour in Paris and Norrland.

The music for Hallowed Passages is Lacrimae for piano and viola opus 48 by Benjamin Britten. It is based on a theme of variations of a lullaby by John Dowland.

“That is more or less what the ballet is for me,” says Philip Taylor, “Like a lullaby. Sleep is ‘the final passage’. One can be chased inwards or outwards by something. What that something might be, the audience gets to decide. A thought fluttering past which, once noticed, can reveal itself to be so strong that it stays in the memory or perhaps grows into a larger thought. Like a seed that is planted and grows either inside or outside of oneself.”

Philip Taylor expressed that he hoped the audience, when they see his ballet, will feel that they are participating and engaged. That they cannot help but be carried away.

The ballet is choreographed for three dancers. Taylor expressed that he thought it would be interesting that the different casts at the Cullberg Ballet would be mixed gender.

The ballet was originally choreographed for the Nederlands Dans Theater during their 1984/85 season.

In X-Dream, Per Jonsson was interested to recapture the power of dance. Due to Jonsson’s Swedish nature and penchant for the poetic, his work has never quite been able to be classified as abstract in the purest sense. This is how Jonsson describes his and artist Johan Scott’s process with the piece X-Dream, at an early stage in the work’s creation:

“X-Dream is an irrational dance with underlying coded layers, of systems resulting in ecstatic winds, ulterior time and precarious states evidenced through the power and musicality of the work. The basis for the piece was first a dance without music, such that the dance could stand on its own two feet. But I quickly felt that that silence, once created, becomes more charged if it is then surrounded by music. The only music worthy of this fate was Bach,

his organ works specifically. In X-Dream, as in Den Leende Hunden, dance is paramount. It has been a relief in X-Dream to not start from a mood, a red thread, a fable, a set, piece of music or the like. NO! In X-Dream I have started from DANCE, its power / joy via my body based on solitary work exploring and deepening DANCE in silence.Dance is not music, theater, etc. Dance has its own language, its own subtle status. If my body is physically tuned, sensitive, and able to hear, dance can flow more spontaneously from it. You feel joy at work. From this basic seed the choreographic form can appear.

This dance can be suffocated if there is too much atmosphere or mystery superimposed on a space. The dance does not need to be supported in its dancing. Dance is itself a mystery, a rite of passage, etc. Dancing is so simple that it is difficult.

When you work with movements with tenacity and diligence, and can thus discern so many rich nuances, rhythms, timings, atmospheres, etc. through this rigorous work, you can then anticipate something big that endures. “

Breath Bandits are people, situations or atmospheres that take your breath away. Sometimes the dancers are ‘bandits’ and sometimes they are victims.

The ballet takes place in short, interrupted episodes and the varying situations can form like people moving in a crowd, who are hunted as in a silent film. Perhaps a murder has been committed or a suicide, or someone just falls asleep? Sometimes we are alone or think about being alone or persecuted. A beautiful landscape or the very beginning of a beautiful day can also take ones breath away. All scenes and movements take place under the darkness of night, but then dawn appears or a light is cast and you realize that everything may not have been as it first seemed, or quite as earnest.

Slow, Heavy and Blue was originally created in February 1980 for the Ballet de l´Opera de Paris and was part of GRTOP’s repertoire from November 1981 (Paris Opera’s young experimental group led by Carolyn Carlson for a number of years). The piece was incorporated into the Cullberg Ballet’s repertoire in 1995. Carolyn Carlson’s choreographic work is poetic and lyrical with an unmistakably magical quality. Slow, Heavy and Blue is a meditative piece for nine dancers and, according to Carolyn Carlson, is just as slow, heavy and ‘blue’ as the following lines reveal:

The sun died SLOW
the earth went HEAVY
and the rain fell BLUE

The music was specially composed by French musician René Aubry. Peter Vos is created the lighting design.

Kyr was commissioned by The Israel Festival and was the first piece created by Naharin after being appointed artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company in 1990. The work is a collaboration between Naharin and the band Tractor’s Revenge (Nikmat HaTraktor). Kyr went on to become one of Naharin’s most renowned works. Perhaps the most iconic sequences in the piece features a rock version of the traditional song Echad Mi Yodea, traditionally sung at the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Kyr reflected an impression of Israeli life at the time of its creation, “with its lost values, lack of faith in the future, aggression and fractured human relations”, as an Israeli journalist wrote after the premiere. Kyr can be read as an allegory about an intensity that borders on insanity. The work is considered to have some parallels with Naharin’s life and his background.

Tabula Rasa (1986) is a term that could be variously defined as clean slate, pure state or something undisturbed. It is one of Ohad Naharin’s earliest works, a commission for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. In Tabula Rasa, Naharin had a desire to show that something important and of substance can be achieved with little means.

Imbued with mystery and chaos, Ohad Naharin’s Arbos (originally created for the Sydney Dance company in 1989) is simultaneously stunning and grandiose. The sound of footsteps and breathing made by the performers inform part of the choreographic structure. Counterpointing this, Arvo Pärt’s sacred musical score incorporated elements of Gregorian chant. Rakefet Levi designed the costumes and the almost mythical lighting designer known simply as Bambi, of Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row Productions fame, designed the light.

The work is highly physical, musical, meticulously structured and crafted, sensual, risky, open and moving.

While not fully an abstract work Arbos did not either follow a normative dramaturgical structure, bound in traditional terms to time and space. It challenged the perception and emotional response, portraying a strong individualism at its core. Naharin sought to depict human wisdom in Arbos, while at the same time making people reconnect to their own life experiences.

This is how Bodil Persson wrote in Dagens Nyheter (Swedish national daily newspaper) after the premiere:

“Arbos (1989) is based on the Estonian Arvo Pärt’s medieval mass. The dancers are dressed in heavy ankle length dresses. It is a piece that incites mystery and chaos …I am stunned by the grandiosity and animal quality in the dancers’ movements. Their breathing and the sound of their footsteps are included in the choreography. Groans and sighs tear at Pärt’s sacred atmospheres.”

Music: Arvo Pärt

“Gräs (Grass) as a work and as a substance describes our origination in nature, as a resonance or foundation for human activities,” said Mats Ek about this work. Though the male and female character have an arc of life within the work, Ek does not consider Gräss a traditional story ballet. Nor is it on the other hand a philosophical’ ballet. “Different compositions or snapshots from life are a more adequate description of the piece”, Ek explains.

“However, my ballets always have an inner dramaturgy or logic for me. But they are decorative in nature or mere abstractions. Rather, my work is an expression – an evaporative humanism.”Ek’s inspiration for Gräss came after creating a solo for his brother Niklas Ek for SVT (Swedish National Television). He saw the need for a sequel. The artist Francis Bacon’s painting depicting twisting bodies in tall grass gave him the starting point for the new ballet.

Grass was originally made for SVT 1984 with Niklas Ek and Ana Laguna. Kåge Andersson was responsible for the TV version’s scenography, for light Bengt Steiner, for costume Gabriella Innerstedt and for camera Jan Hugo Norman. The stage version Gräs premiered in 1987 with the Royal Ballet and premiered with the Cullberg Ballet the following year.

Music in Utan titel:
Chant by Jens Johansson, Anders Johansson, Jonas Hellborg
Recording: RAF, Ode to a Tractor, DEM CD 030

Stay where you are, Konkret by Jonas Helborg
Recording: RAF, Ode to a Tractor, DEM CD 030

Poverty (ur Once upon a time in America) av Ennio Morricone
Record recording: John Zorn, conducter and arrangment
Toots Thielemans, harmonica
Guy Klucevsek, accordion
Carol Emanuel, harp
The Big Gundown
ICON Records LC 0286

“Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future”

– T.S Eliot

“Except for the still point there would be no dance and there is only the dance”

– T.S. Eliot

Present tense and past tense
may both be present in the near future
and the time to come is in the past.
Without the quiet point there would be no dance,
and there is only dance

In the concluding stanzas of the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot writes about the fire and the rose:

everything must be turned for the better
when the flames bend
in the crowned knot of fireand fire and rose are one.

Carolyn Carlson was the artistic director of the Cullberg Ballet from 1993-1995. Sub Rosa was Carlsson’s first work created expressly for the Cullberg Ballet and had its premiere at Dansens Hus, Stockholm in January of 1995. The primary themes of the work were time, dance, fire and the rose. Inspirations included the poetry of Fernando Pessoas, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as well as a book by William Edelen titled Towards The Mystery, about the dreams of Albert Einstein. Finally, and not least, the versatility and talent of the dancers played a major role in the creation of the piece The performers in Sub Rosa not only danced but also played music. Bernard Cauchard, a member of the company at the time, played both accordion and organ while his colleague Yvan Auzely read lyrics and danced. Another dancer, Vanessa McIntosh, designed the costumes. Additionally the piece featured a bold light design and imaginative scenography.

As a devout Zen Buddhist, Carolyn Carlson has a particular interest in the conception and experience of presence and time. Her thoughts on time are summarized in Towards The Mystery, by William Edelen:

“Einstein once pointed out that among the peoples of the earth, a 12-year-old Hopi Indian would be best prepared to understand his theory of relativity because Hopis have no expression of time, neither past time nor future. Time for them is merely swirling space where past, present and future time are one and the same concept. Behind and beyond our senses is a layer of consciousness in which everything is related. Everything is one and everything is NOW.”

* The Romans considered the rose as symbolizing a pact of secrecy. It was hung above the table at a traditional banquet, a symbolic reminder that what was uttered there should remain confidential. (Source Nordic Family Book)

Detailed information on the music of Sub Rosa:

Act 1

Specter by John Oswald
Publisher: Short Stories, Kronos Quartet, Elektra Nonesuch
7559-79310-2

Four for tango by Astor Piazzola
Publisher: Winter was hard, Kronos Quartet, Elektra Nonesuch 7559-79181-2

An eye for optical theory by Michael Nyman
Publisher: Short cuts, the Michael Nyman Band, Argo
443-396-2

The Old Tower of Löbenicht by Gavin Bryars
Publisher: After the requiem, ECM new series 1424

Balada Conducatorolui av Sapo Perapaskero
Publisher: Latcho Drom, Taraf de Haidouks, Virgin
72438 392492-9

Bella by bar light, The good and happy army, A woman can take … by John Lurie
Publisher: Winter wass hard, Kronos Quartet, Elektra Nonesuch
7559-79181-2

Stranger than paradise, The Paradise Quartet
Publisher: Made to Measure, MTM 7 CD

The sex of Chris Fitkin
Publisher: Short Cuts, Piano Circus, Argo
443 396-2

Cossacks farewell (Trad.)
Publisher: The Terem Quartet, Real Worlds Records
77778-62842-2

Simfonia Lubova by Igor Ponomarenko
Publisher: The Terem Quartet, Real Worlds Records
77778-62842-2

Danse de la Mariee by Micha Nisimov
Publisher: Les Yeux Noirs, A Band of Gypsies, Buda Musique
82840-2

Dance Roumaine by Eric Slabiak
Publisher: Les Yeux Noirs, A Band of Gypsies, Buda Musique
82840-2

Le Chale bleu by Francois Perchat
Publisher: Les Yeux Noirs, A Band of Gypsies, Buda Musique
82840-2

Morange … almost a tango by Thomas Oboe Lee
Publisher: White Man Sleeps, Kronor Quartet, Elektra Nonesuch
7559-79163-2

Crossing by Paul Giger
Publisher: Chartre, ECM New Series 1386

Act 2

String Quartet No. 1, The Sinking of the Titanic, Sub Pink by Gavin Bryars14.
Publisher: Three Viennese Dancers, Adritti String Qaurtet, ECM New Series 1323

The sinking of the Titanic, Crepuscule TW1 922-2
Vita Nova, Gavin Bryars Ensemble, ECM New Series 1533

L’Odeur de L’ombre, a duet created for Gunilla Hammar and Pompea Santoro by choreographer Stijn Celis, featured an appearance by a stuffed fox. The 10-minute piece was described as “a reinterpretation of the fable Little Red Riding Hood”. L’Odeur de L’ombre was created by the dancer Stijn Celis, still a dancer at the time, created L’Odeur de L’ombre, on the occasion of a workshop series at Moderna Dansteatern (MDT). Stijn Celis went on to create several works for the Cullberg Ballet and enjoy a successful career as an internationally renowned choreographer and artistic director of a number of European dance companies.

Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (1996) marked Örjan Andersson’s first commission for the Cullberg Ballet. The piece had its premiere at Dansens Hus in Stockholm, and was held in high regard. Andersson has since gone on to a successful career both in Sweden and internationally, having created numerous pieces, both commissioned and independent productions.

Inspired by Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) Ek’s piece Bernardas Hus depicts the story of the pious widow Bernarda Alba who exercises total control over her five unmarried daughters during a self imposed eight year period of mourning, following the death of her second husband.

The central theme of the piece is oppression versus freedom. Ek depicts various forms of this oppression in the work – religious, parental, etc. In addition, he depicts various forms of struggle and revolt. In an interesting inversion Ek has the matriarch Bernarda, traditionally played by a woman, instead played by a male dancer instead. In this house of severely disciplinedand oppressed daughters, the maid seems to be the only person who holds the key to the events at hand. Ultimately however, passions cannot be quelled.

Ek chose a collage of Spanish guitar music as well as organ music by Bach as the accompaniment to Bernardas Hus.

For the premiere of Carmen (1992) in Seville, the title was shortened simply to Bernarda so as to have a program that contained two female Spanish names. After this, the work was alternately titled Bernarda or Bernardas Hus, though the choreography remained the same.

The lighting design was first done by Ek himself, thereafter by Krystof Kozlowski, and finally Jörgen Jansson from 1990 onwards.

Bernardas Hus was recorded by SVT (Swedish National Television) in 1986. Producer: Måns Reuterswärd

Mats Eks Carmen (1992) is a retelling via Don José, his tragic life unfolding in a series of kaleidoscopic events leading to his execution. The piece depicts a series of powerful emergent images, featuring groups of gypsies and soldiers as well as all the famous characters: Micaëla, Escamillo and Zuniga (Don José’s rivals) and at the center of the action is Carmen herself.

While Georges Bizet conceives of Carmen as a sympathetic, freedom-loving young woman in his opera, Mats Ek chose to also include other traits that Prosper Merimée writes of in the original 1847 short story. In Ek’s telling, Carmen can be both cruel and treacherous in nature, possessed of a singular fidelity to herself, despite her outward infidelity.

Marie-Louise De Geer Bergenstråhle (née Ekman), a frequent collaborator of Ek’s, designed the striking costumes and sets. The music is Bizet’s / Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite in a Russian orchestration.

Carmen was danced by a total of eighteen of the Cullberg Ballet’s dancers. A Swedish / Spanish co-production, Carmen marked the a unique collaboration between by the Cullberg Ballet and the Spanish Quinto Centenario.

In 1994, SVT (Swedish National Television) recorded Carmen. The film went on to win an Emmy award in the category Performing Arts. Producer: Gunilla Wallin

Music:
Bizet / Shchedrin: Carmen Suite
Conductor: Vladimir Spivakov
MCD108

Jens Östberg’s Born at the Point of Impact is itself born out by an abstract thought, though in so doing it does not exclude the potential for human drama. The conceptual framework is that each singular concentration of energy or dynamic gives rise to a new kind of focus, or a new passage, opening or negotiation. From the minutiae of the work, the movement, to itsgrand scale direction and overarching course of action, something novel appears at the point of impact.

Though Östbergs work could be defined as epic and dramatic in some sense, it is uniquely formed through a cinematic perspective. (Östberg would later go on to direct a number of films and television series.) This particular work was inspired by the aesthetic of comic books and graphic novels.

In a rapid fire line up of images, Born at the Point of Impact is formed through different passages that accumulate and come to a head, pivot, or create a focal point.

The exception to this structure is a duet danced by two men, one mutilated, the other in tact. The scene is simple yet full of uncanny surprises.

Born at the Point of Impact featured music by the group Dead Can Dance. It has elements of Celtic and Arabic folk music. At once beautifully melancholic and sacred, the music is also punctuated with strong contemporary currents.

Över Bord (Over Board) premiered in the autumn of 1996 and was Linus Tunström’s first work for the Cullberg Ballet. Following the opening in Västerås, Sweden, Martin Nyström wrote the following in Dagens Nyheter

(Swedish national daily newspaper):

“Över Bord is, finally, a tribute to the transformative magic of performance as a genre. An abracadabra toward what is perceived as locked into place, and a pair of rosey wings for all that is stuck. And as such, nothing short of a minor miracle.”

Danced at the premiere by: Stijn Celis, Bernardo Gama, Gunilla Hammar, Vanessa McIntosh, Monica Mengarelli, Tali Paz, Veli-Pekka Peltokallio, Torunn Robstad, Pompea Santoro and Eytan Sivak

Music:
Giuseppe Verdi
Vanne … lasciami … ur II Trovatore, akt4
Record recording: Maria Callas Rarities
EMI Classics, 0777 7 54437 2 1

JS Bach
Come your daughters … the introductory chorus from the Passion of Matthew
Record: Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Choir, Sir George Solti – Conductor
Decca 425 691-2

Franz Schubert
Allegro molto moderato, c-moll ur 4 Impromptus, D.899, op.90
Record recording: Hans Pålsson – piano
CSCD 94010

Dave Barbour / Peggy Lee
Manana
Record Recording: The Best of Peggy Lee ‘The Capitol Years
CDP 7 90552 2

Johannes Brahms
Rondo alla Zingarese from piano quartet nr1, op.25
Record recording: Emil Gilels piano, Members of the Amadeus Quartet
Deutsche Grammophon, 447 407-2 GIOR

Lars-Eric Uneståhl
Excerpts from self-image training
Record recording: Veje International AB

Pierrick Hardy
Touetatou
Record recording: BASS BASS BASS & BASS, L’Orchester de ContreBasses
MG 002/08623 – 2

John Philipp Sousa
Semper fidelis
Record Recording: Sousa Marches, Band of the Grenadier Guards
Decca PFS 4134

Alfred Schnittke
Rondo ur Concerto Grosso nr 1
Disc recording: Kremer plays Schnittke
Deutsche Grammophon, 445 520-2 GIMA

Stijn Celis created Ubiloz Vanilla for the Cullberg Ballet in the spring of 1997. A grotesque, intense, intimate and bright piece, it contained black humor and irony as well. Ubiloz Vanilla was a work about a man’s encounters and journeys from childhood to adulthood.

Music
Hernandez
J Ortiz de Mendivil
Cachita, Lecuona Cuban Boys
Virgin 30831

Fred Frith
Waking against sleep
The Boy Beats the Rams
ESD 80452

Igor Stravinskij
Masterpieces, Andante from Suite no. 1 for small orchestra
SMK 46296

FT Marinetti
Definizione di Futurismo
Sub Rosa SUBCD012-19

Tiere der Nacht, another world
I still love you
RecDEc 50
LC 7981 EFA CD 14706-2

Inspired by Shakespeare’s renowned drama, Birgit Cullberg’s Romeo and Juliet depicts a feud between two Renaissance families, the Capulets and Montagues. Romeo Montague falls in love with Juliet Capulet, but through the family strife and a twist of fate, they can only be united in death.

Cullberg’s choreography of the classic play utilizes the music to dramatic effect to depict the power struggle at the heart of the Renaissance, and how the young lovers are crushed between it and the two hostile families.

Cullberg developed Romeo och Julia in three iterations over the course of many years. The first version of premiered with the original Cullberg Ballet at the Concert Hall in Stockholm in 1944. Alvar Granström designed the costumes.

The second version ofRomeo och Julia had its premiere at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm in 1955. Here with costumes designed by Jan Brazda.

The third version of Romeo och Julia premiered with the later version of Cullberg Ballet, in 1969. Costumes were designed Eva Ek-Schaeffer. The work featured a section of flag dance choreography by Mats Ek.Marking Birgit Cullbeg’s 90th birthday on the 3rd of August, 1998, the Cullberg Ballet danced Romeo and Juliet to a packed crowd at the summer stage of Vitabergs Park in Stockholm, with Birgit herself in attendance. The audience was jubilant.