LAPLAND BALLET GIVES CHOREOGRAPHER IDEAS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29264, 23 July 1960, Page 2

LAPLAND BALLET GIVES CHOREOGRAPHER IDEAS

[Bj, SUSAN VAUGHAN)

When Mrs Birgit Ragnkild Cullberg was devising steps for a new ballet called “Moon Reindeer,” she spent a month in a hut in the Far North of Europe, studying the Lapps. It is such persistence and determination as this that has gained Mrs Cullberg, aged 51 —whose creations are currently being danced by the American Ballet Theatre on its tour of Europe—the reputation of being one of the world’s greatest choreographers. , f or One critic has written: “The mere fact of a new ballet by her is important.” Mrs Cullberg, a tall, well-built woman with short, slicked-back hair, is the daughter of a South Swedish banker. She went to Stockholm University and studied literature but did not start dancing professionally until she was 31.

She soon became interested in the dramatic possibilities of ballet: expressing the ideas of great dramatists through the dance. Two

of her latest ballets are "Miss Julie” (adapted from Strindberg) and "Lady from the Sea” (from Ibsen)

While planning a ballet—arranging the movements of up to 20 dancers—she locks herself alone in a studio. “I would become embarrassed if ‘they were to watch me,” she says. She lives in a flat (five rooms and a dance studio) in Stockholm with her husband, Anders Ak, a leading Swedish actor, their 17-year-old son, Niklas, and their 15,-year-old twins. Mats (boy) and Malin (girl). The children are learning to dance—after a somewhat reluctant start. "They have left it a bit late,” says Mrs Cullberg. They are a busy family. Nobody has time for cooking—they have their food sent up from the restaurant on the ground floor of the block of flats.

But they are hoping to spend more time together from next month, when globe-trotting Mrs Cullberg settles down in Stockholm as director of plays at the new City Theatre there. "The theatre will give rile new ideas for new ballets,” she says. "I will never give up the ballet.”