Kim Brandstrup
Full Works
Full Length Works
“[Goldberg] is an ingeniously organised, frequently humorous, gently enigmatic and wholly luminous hour and a quarter – a mini-masterpiece” - Jenny Gilbert
Kim Brandstrup first took up the challenge of the full evening ballet in 1990 when he created Peer Gynt and has since made eleven full-length dance works. From the beginning the works were imbued by cinematic dramaturgy and in pieces like Peer Gynt (1990), Antic (1993), and Othello (1994), he created tightly paced contemporary tales from complex classic narratives, pairing them right down to their dramatic essence.
His love for and knowledge of the large scale ballet cannon is clearly demonstrated in his three full-length classical works: Amor and Psyche (1997), Sleeping Beauty (1998), and Queen of Spades (2001).
The trilogy demonstrate his grasp of epic narrative scale and are at once affectionate homages to the nineteenth century form and a strong bid for reinventing it.
More recently, in pieces like Goldberg(2009), Hamlet (2003), and Brothers (2002), he has played with a more poetic, multi-layered narrative language that while still tightly structured has a looser and more poetic eloquence in its story telling.
Full Length Works Projects
Life is a Dream
Rambert Dance Company
Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, 23 May 2018
Life Is a Dream is far closer to poetry than drama… Brandstrup’s choreography... is always finely composed and the dancing itself is richly inflected. Flurries of action catch the surges, spikes and trails of Witold Lutosławski’s restless score (played live – a real treat), and the sinewy spirals, tilts and feints make the dancers feel as evasive as the shadows they cast. Brandstrup also makes a virtue of restraint. Stillness and absence are as integral as action and presence, and he can make small gestures such as curling up, holding still or turning away feel large with implication.
Sanjoy Roy, The Guardian
Shaken Mirror "Rystet Spejl"
The Royal Danish Ballet
The Royal Danish Theatre, København, 28th May 2016
''It is an enchanting, beautiful and evocative intersection between dance, text and music choreographer Kim Brandstrup has created in his new and very original staged work''
Vibele Wern, Berlingske Tidende
*****
Goldberg
ROH2
Royal Opera House, September 2009
“an ingeniously organised, frequently humorous, gently enigmatic and wholly luminous hour and a quarter – a mini-masterpiece, in short.”
Jenny Gilbert, Independent on Sunday *****
THE ANATOMY OF A STORYTELLER
Arc Dance Company
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, 8 November 2004
"a mastery act...Brandstrup is a gifted storyteller and he sketches the tale with rapid wit... and the nine dancers could hardly be bettered"
The Guardian
Hamlet
Arc Dance Company
The Landmark Theatre, Ilfracombe, March 2003
“. Brandstrup’s vision, and his power to realise it, make a memorable work of art. Kim Brandstrup’s new Hamlet is his most powerful creation to date.”
Clement Crisp, Financial Times
Brothers
Arc Dance Company
The Landmark Theatre, Ilfracombe, March 2002
“[Brandstrup] has spent his career exploring ways of infusing his choreography with drama without resorting to straight-forward, linear-narrative storytelling. This is one of his finest, most fulfilling creations”
Allan Robertson ,Time Out London
Queen of Spades
Les Grandes Ballets Canadiennes
Theatre Maisonneuve of Place des Arts, Montreal, October 2001
“A royal flush!" "The Queen of Spades: The choreographer has played his cards very well by artfully blending modernity and classicism." "... the clarity of action, the delicacy of movement, the lovely music, and, most of all, the understated aestheticism leave you breathless throughout the ballet."
- Linda Boutin, Voir,
The Return Of Don Juan
Arc Dance Company
Sadler's Wells, March 1999
“Brandstrup’s movement language is fluently lyrical, whirling arabesques cutting across the diagonals. He writes the mime straight into the dance, so the story is always on the move, while characters who lurk on the sidelines are given richly expressive cameos”
Debra Craine, The Times
Sleeping Beauty
Royal New Zealand Ballet
St James Theatre,
Wellington,New Zealand, May 1998
This beautiful new production is traditional at heart, pays homage to Petipa at all the right moments and is packed full of brilliant dancing, it is one of the company’s finest acheivements."
Rod Bliss , Sunday Star Times
Amor og Psyche
Royal Danish Ballet
Det Kongelige Teater, Copenhagen, May 1997
"The format is indisputable , with his first great full-length ballet, Kim Brandstrup demonstrated his ability to handle the big dramatic structure . With a cinematic drive in the editing and a swell of emotion in the form"
- Monna Dithmer, Politiken
Crime Fictions
Arc Dance Company
Wycombe Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, February 1996
Crime Fictions is Brandstrup at his most agile, a master storyteller and inventive dance maker whose own story is unfolding in new and triumphant chapters.
Evening Standard
Othello
Arc Dance Company/Irek Mukhamedov
Sadler's Wells, Feburary 1994
"Given Brandstrup’s confident and impassioned choreographic style with its strongly dramatic basis and cinematic fluency, Mukhamedov had no need to adapt his classical training. His part was brilliantly tailored to suit the vigorous and virtuoso Bolshoi technique "
Katherine Sorley Walker, Daily Telegraph
Antic
Arc Dance Company
Derby Playhouse, January 1993
" Kim Brandstrup’s latest work for his excellent Arc Dance Company is Antic, which he claims is only based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But no other wordless evocation of the play I have ever seen has encapsulated so powerfully, so clearly, the heart of the matter. "
The Gaurdian
Peer Gynt
Arc Dance Company
The Place Theatre, London, March 1990
“Every stage of Ibsen’s stark morality play emerges with imaginative clarity and, as always, Brandstrup has assembled the right artistic collaborators as well as a responsive group of dancers…Peer Gynt shows his skill in narrative development and evocative stagecraft”
Daily Telegraph
