Opernhaus, Zürich Saturday, January 18, 2025
Zürich Ballet,, Saturday, January 18. 2025
In his new full-length ballet for Ballett Zürich - his first for the company - Kim Brandstrup celebrates the complex life and prolific imagination of Hans Christian Andersen - arguably Denmark’s most famous author, and best known internationally for his bitter-sweet fairytales.
Brandstrup has lived in London for nearly 40 years but, growing up in Denmark, he was immersed in Andersen’s stories from an early age, and they have long resonated in his creative consciousness.
He first brought his fascination with Anderson to the stage in 2004 in Anatomy of a Storyteller - a darkly memorable portrait of this complex and strange man, created for his own Arc Dance Company. The stellar cast of contemporary dancers at that time included Cathy Marston, now Director and Chief Choreographer of Ballett Zürich - and it is she who has commissioned Brandstrup to immerse himself and the company’s dancers in Andersen’s life and fairytale worlds. The ballet marks the 150th anniversary of Andersen’s death.
In his new ballet, Kim Brandstrup will examine Andersen’s deep sense of himself as an outsider - he was born into poverty and was often ill at ease with the secure 19th century Danish bourgeois society to which he was admitted when he made his reputation as a literary figure.
It’s no surprise that outsiders are also omnipresent in his fairy tales: the little mermaid who looks through the porthole into the interior of a ship and longs for a home among humans, the ugly duckling looking for acceptance, or the little girl with the matchsticks who peers into festively lit Christmas parlours in the icy cold on Christmas Eve. As outsiders who don’t belong, they are mercilessly exposed to harsh and threatening natural forces that rage outside the bounds of domestic bliss.