Family workshop
To prepare the visit to the opera, participants are introduced to the plot as well as important characters, and they also rehearse short dance scenes. Valid only in combination with a visit to a family performance.
Registration required
Tel: 030 34 384-166
E-mail: contact@tanz-ist-klasse.de
25 May - 1 Jun 2025
Seven days of ballet en suite! In early summer, the Staatsballett invites you to a packed programme in two Berlin opera houses. With festive gala performances, highlights from the current repertoire, a special edition of Ballet Talk, workshops, as well as talks and exchanges with the artists, the Ballet Week offers an opportunity to immerse deeply into the world of professional dance.
And it is especially worthwhile with the TanzTicket: the season pass for 25/26 is already available at the Ballet Week, two months before the start of the new season, and offers a 20% discount on all performances.
«I want them to fall in love with the piece.»
Edward Clug in conversation with Christian Spuck
CS (Christian Spuck) What inspired you to choose Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as new production for the Staatsballett Berlin?
EC (Edward Clug) So far all the stories, Peer Gynt, Faust, The Master and Margarita and The Nutcracker, that I’ve interpreted in full length ballets, share the element of the unseen and the unreal. I feel attracted to that imaginary world, especially when it interacts with ours. When that happens, the banality of the reality becomes sublime and transforms something that is akin to ‹magical realism›. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is entirely about that, and it simply feels like the right choice for my next adventure!
CS You have many different layers in this play: you have the world of the fairies; you have the real world; and you have a play within a play. So it’s also about theatre itself. A play within a play can be a challenge...
EC When you do a play without spoken words, you always have a problem. In this case, I have one more. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a very special work, and therefore I will have to approach it in a different way. The works that I’ve mentioned before are all built on the fundamental conflict between ‹good› and ‹evil›. In this case we witness the conflict between ‹being in love› and ‹not being loved› when the roles are reversed. It sounds confusing, and this is what Shakespeare does with great skill: he is confusing his characters, lets them struggle in disorder before establishing the final order. To provide the same amusing and rich experience that the readers of the play have, I have to invent a narrative of the expected with unexpected means.
CS Are you choreographing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or are you making a new dance piece which is inspired by it?
EC At this point, as much as I can, I will follow Shakespeare, but to a point where I have to let go and come up with my own understanding and needs. I feel for the viewer, it is nice to rely on the story and to rediscovery it in a different medium.
CS You are one of the rare choreographers that create story ballets. I can see your work, and I understand what’s it about. How do you do that? Do you create the scenes as a director, or do you start as a choreographer?
EC Certainly, as a director. I try to create a stage concept out of the story. Each time, I imagine a place where this is going to happen, but this is not necessarily always the starting point. Before I enter the studio and begin the work with the dancers, I explore the piece with my team multiple times. This frame is needed to prepare for the action, and despite the vigorous preparations, I try to remain open for the unplanned.
CS When we think about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, everybody is thinking also about the famous music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. I know that you are working together with the composer Milko Lazar. What are your plans?
EC I even had the whole first scene already worked out in detail to Mendelssohn’s famous violin concerto. I was very sure for a few months. Then, the more I explored the music together with Milko Lazar, the deeper we developed our work and understood that we wanted to let go of Mendelssohn. I’m sure that Milko’s music will be an inspiring landscape for our story and will deliver the suitable support for the various situations and the overall atmosphere.
CS I know the music of Milko Lazar very well. His music is theatrical, surprising and powerful. So, of course, I’m excited that you work with Milko again and also with the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. How does the collaboration between you look like?
EC We have been working together since 2008, which comes down to a good 16 years of collaboration. We started in the beginning with one, maximum two instruments. Our worlds were in fact very minimalistic, and we thought that we do not need more than that. That changed with Faust. I knew Milko’s symphonic works, which were not designed for ballets, but for concerts and large orchestras. So, partly our inspiration took off from there. Sometimes, I come with a theme or a motif, and he comes up with samples, each one maybe one minute long, and then we discuss them. Milko develops them further and then we discuss them again. Later, we name them and find the appropriate place for them in the ballet. When I imagine a scene, I also kind of hear a certain tune or rhythm for that particular moment.
CS I remember he came to Zurich and was in the studio with you and played piano or some of his recorded pieces. So it’s really a collaboration during the creative process. And in what kind of world will you take us with your costumes and set design? Is it set in the present or a mix of different time periods?
EC We try not to be too specific in terms of period and, also not too illustrative in terms of the narrative. Probably the appearance is closer to nowadays.
CS You are one of those choreographers who is not afraid of big productions. Is that a challenge for you at all and how does that influence your creativity?
EC Coming here today, I experienced something very pleasant in this big opera house. I felt like a beginner. With that comes a certain excitement of working in a place you have never been before. Your senses start to boil and your ambitions are awakening. If this place impresses me already in the first moments, I will do something to impress it back.
CS How did you get into dance?
EC Well, I would say that is also connected with the history of Berlin, which in a way was also ours in Romania. So, back in the Eighties, when I started ballet school, it was not my wish but my father’s, who was in love with art...
CS Your father sent you to ballet school? That’s the first time ever, I’ve heard that! Normally parents, especially fathers, seem to be against that.
EC He was unusual and probably sometimes a bit too open-minded for the communistic authorities in that little town, where I was growing up. He was, in a way, the engine when it comes to culture. He wanted to be a musician and had a rock band. He also acted in an amateur theatre group, like one of the mechanics in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, except he did not impersonate Pyramus but George Dandin in Molière’s eponymous play. I remember I was crying when he was beaten up in that role. So, I grew up in that free-spirited family. My father wanted me to become an artist under all circumstances. When I was ten years old, he asked: «Would you like to go to ballet school in Cluj-Napoca?» I liked the idea to go to a big city. So, I took the exam, and after two weeks, I was attending ballet school with harsh conditions during the Ceausescu times. I almost got kicked out because in the beginning everything seemed funny to me. After three months, I started to take it more seriously. Then I heard about the dancers who managed to escape the system, famous dancers, who ended up in the U.S., in Germany, in France, in the West in general.
That was my motivation. At eleven, I knew I wanted to finish ballet school just to escape the country. This is why I mentioned Berlin earlier, because the West was absolutely surreal to us. It was kind of a fairy world with Coca-Cola and jeans. It was an aspiration to literally seek for freedom.
CS In what mood would you like the audience leave after having seen your A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
EC I want them to fall in love with the piece.
Quoted from the 24/25 season brochure.
