Costume and Setting of Giselle

“In the first act, the action does not take place in the conventional Germany; Marie-Louise Ekman has created a surrealist landscape in a naive style: a tropical island’s mountainous shapes suggest the sensuality of a woman’s body, generous, voluptuous. The second act is also a mental landscape. On the walls, pieces of human bodies are placed here and there, a nose, a finger, a breast... a mangled humanity, broken into pieces and trapped in an empty and icy space.”

Madeleine Kats

http://www.opera-lyon.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Module_Pro/Ballet/Giselle/Giselle_presentation_anglais_10_08_27.pdf 

The Costume

The costume for Giselle is a dark pink and light pink long skirt and top, which suggests her plain, child like mind set, manor, and behaivour. Albrecht wears all white which means he doesnt work, as it was highly impractical in those days to wear less durable clothing that  needs lots of washing to work, as work then, was manual labor like farming etc. The Willies now mental patients, wear modern hospital robes and some wear head bandages. This is suggesting that back in those days when it waas set, patients must have had surgery on the head as the doctors saw it as a way to make them better. The costume for the Villagers and Hilarion are rough looking, wearing dark trousers and top. This is because black is a practical working colour and the rugged material and the dye is cheaper so therefore the clothing will be cheaper as villagers were poor.

Matts Ek's Training and Background

http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1T4ACAW_enGB349GB349&q=matts%20ek&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=TLxYT5bEJIiy8QPHxYGEDw&biw=1024&bih=322&sei=WbxYT8_KJZSf8gPVuZ2CDw

Ek was born in Malmö in 1945, the son of the Royal Dramatic Theatre actor Anders Ek and famous choreographer Birgit Cullberg.


At 17, he followed a summer dance course (modern) taught by Donya Feuer. He pursued theatrical studies at the Marieborg Folks College in Sweden. From 1966 until 1973, he acted as the director for the Marionett Theater as well as the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.


In 1972, Ek joined the Cullberg Ballet. In 1975, he formed part of the corps de ballet for the Ballett der Deutschen Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. And in 1976, he made his first choreography titled The Officer's Servant for the Cullberg Ballet. In 1978, Ek became, together with Birgit Cullberg, artistic director of the Cullberg Ballet, until 1985 when the responsibility became his entirely. This position he fulfilled until 1993. During the season 1980-1981, he was associated with the Nederlands Dans Theater as dancer as well as choreographer.


In some of Ek's former choreographies, traditions of Kurt Jooss and of his mother, Birgit Cullberg may be apparent. He uses classical as well as modern dance techniques. Social engagement of psychological dilemmas combined with subtle humor, form the basis of his choreographies. For Ek, movement is a means of individual expression. Aesthetic value is not his first priority.


He has for thirty years been a highly esteemed choreographer throughout the world. He studied dance and theatre and directed theatre at the Marionette Theatre, the Stockholm City Theatre and the Royal Dramatic Theatre. In 1973 Mats Ek joined the Cullberg Ballet as a dancer. Three years later he began choreographing for the company with immediate success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats_Ek#Life_and_career

Birgit Cullburg

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=birgit+cullberg&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1T4ACAW_enGB349GB349&biw=1024&bih=322&tbm=isch&tbnid=DrfHJRKl9pUsoM:&imgrefurl=http://dansportalen.se/111/fler-artiklar/nyhetsarkiv/10-20-2008-tre-kvinnliga-pionjarer-i-svts-danskvall.html&docid=6PONhhObgTv21M&imgurl=http://dansportalen.se/images/18.ecdbb7b11d09798ba180002230/bcullberg_2.gif&w=578&h=600&ei=JTtBT53QNoKT8gOf3eSyCA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=235&sig=110760382643984361386&page=1&tbnh=162&tbnw=173&start=0&ndsp=5&ved=0CE4QrQMwAg&tx=101&ty=94

Birgit Cullberg (3 August 1908 – 8 September 1999) was a Swedish choreographer. The daughter of bank manager Carl Cullberg and Elna Westerström, Cullberg was born in Nyköping and married from 1942 to 1949 to actor Anders Ek. She was the mother of Niklas Ek, Mats Ek, and Malin Ek.
Cullberg studied ballet under Kurt Jooss-Leeder and Lilian Karina and at The Royal Ballet, London (1952–1957). In 1960, Cullberg was appointed director and choreographer at the Stockholm City Theatre. Some of her choreographies were premiered at the Royal Opera in Stockholm.

Cullberg gained international recognition by founding the Cullberg Ballet in the 1960s. On her retiring in 1985, her son Mats Ek took over the ballet company. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee instituted the Cullberg scholarship in her honour, and she was awarded an honorary professorship at Stockholm University, where she had studied when she was young.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgit_Cullberg

Kurt Jooss

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Kurt Jooss (12 January 1901, Wasseralfingen, Germany – 22 May 1979, Heilbronn, West Germany) was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater. Jooss is noted for establishing several dance companies, including most notably, the Folkwang Tanztheater, in Essen.

Jooss disliked plotless dances and preferred themes that addressed moral issues. Naturalistic movement, large-scale unison and characterisation were used by Jooss to address political concerns of the time. His most important choreographic work, The Green Table (1932), had won first prize at an international competition for new choreography held by the Archives Internationales de la Danse in Paris in 1932. It was a strong anti-war statement, and was made a year before Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. "The Green Table" is considered his most popular piece.

In 1933 Jooss was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis asked him to dismiss the Jews from his company and he refused. Jooss and Leeder (and doubtless Fritz Cohen and other members of his original company) took refuge in Holland before resettling in England. After touring in Europe and America, Jooss and Leeder opened a school at Dartington Hall in Devon. A piece he choreographed at this time was a light hearted one in comparison to "The Green Table" named "Ball in Old Vienna (1932)".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Jooss

Modern Dance - History - The Second Generation

The 1930s

The second wave of modern dancers emerged in New York. They included Americans Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, all of who had danced with Denishawn and the German-American dancer Hanva Holm, who came from Mary Wigman’s company. These dancers rejected external movement sources and turned to basic human movement experiences such as breathing and walking. They transformed these natural actions into dance movements.

Martha Graham evolved her technique of contraction and release from natural breathing and explored movement initiated in the torso. In the late 1930s she became interested in narrative structure and literary subject matter. Together with Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, she created narrative locales that were both mythic and psychic. She danced the roles of female protagonists confronting moments of crisis whilst other dancers represented various aspects of the protagonist’s self in crisis.

Doris Humphrey evolved her technique of fall and recovery from the natural dynamic of the human footfall. This technique became a metaphor for the relationship of the individual to a greater force. After Humphrey stopped performing, she continued to choreograph for her protégé, Mexican-American dancer and choreographer, Jose Limon. The choreographic sources for her late works were words and gestures rather than her own movement experiences.

During the 1930s, choreographers defined modern dance and ballet in opposition to one another. Modern dance was established as a technique with its own internal coherence and ballets was defined by reaffirming the essential tenets of its tradition. Both ballet and modern choreographers focused on the purity of their traditions.

Post-war Developments

Twyla Tharp found their movement sources in the proliferation of 20th-century dance styles and their works combined and fused techniques drawn from social dance, ballet and modern dance. She began her career as part of the 1960s avant-garde. During this time of social upheaval, the American dancers Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and other created works at the extreme limit of what is considered dance.

Merce Cunningham fused Grahams technique with ballet, locating the source of movement in the spine. He organized the changes of movement through methods based on chance, and considered music and décor independent of the dance. His works revealed individual dancers experiencing their relation to present time and abstract space.

Modern Dance - History - The First Generation

Early Period – 1900

The first three decades embrace the careers of the American dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis and the German dancer, Mary Wigman. This was preceded by a period of reaction against the empty spectacle of late 19th-century ballet.

There were two developments that helped inspire a freer kind of dance movement:

- The system of natural expressive gestures – developed by French Actor Francois Delsarte.
- Eurhythmics – a system for teaching musical rhythms through body movement – created by Swiss music educator, Emile Jacques-Dalcroze.

Early modern dancers looked beyond the dominant tradition of Western theatrical dance (ballet) in order to give their dance a more communicative power. They drew on archaic or exotic sources for inspiration. During the same period, some ballet choreographers also looked to similar sources.

Isadora Duncan used Greek sculpture as a movement source and danced in bare feet and a simple tunic. She created dances that alternated between resisting and yielding to gravity. Her response to the music of romantic composers such as Chopin and Liszt dictated the form of her choreography.

Ruth St. Denis turned to ethnic and Asian dance styles as a basis and in 1915 she formed the dance company, Denishawn, with her husband, Ted Shawn. She trained dancers to dance as she did, in a diverse range of styles. Later, American choreographers such as Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus continued her interest in ethnic styles.

Mary Wigman looked to Africa and the Orient for inspiration. She presented both solo and group works, often arranged in cycles. Along with other German modern dancers – Rudolf von Laban, Kurt Jooss and Herald Kreutzberg, she made extensive use of masks.

http://www.dancedirectory.co.za/content/articles/articles.asp?MID=270&Section=ModernDanceandHipHop

Dorris Humphrey

Doris Batcheller Humphrey (October 17, 1895 – December 29, 1958) was a dancer and choreographer of the early twentieth century. Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. She was the daughter of Horace Buckingham Humphrey and Julia Ellen Wells and was a descendant of pilgrim William Brewster. Along with her contemporaries, Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham, Humphrey was one of the second generation modern dance pioneers, who followed their forerunners – including Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn – in exploring the use of breath and developing techniques still taught today. As a result of many of her works being annotated, Humphrey continues to be taught, studied and performed to this day.

In Chicago, she both studied and taught dance, opening her own dance school in 1913 at the age of 19. In 1917, she moved to California and entered the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, where she studied, performed, taught classes, and learned choreography. Her creations from this era, Valse Caprice (Scarf Dance), Soaring, and Scherzo Waltz (Hoop Dance) are all still performed today. Humphrey toured the Orient for two years, followed by a successful career in American vaudeville theaters.

In 1928, she and fellow dancer Charles Weidman separated from the Denishawn School and moved to New York City, to become key figures in the modern dance movement. Her choreography explored the nuances of the human body's responses to gravity, embodied in her principle of fall and recovery. Her choreography from these early years includes Water Study, Life of the Bee, Two Ecstatic Themes and The Shakers.
The Humphrey-Weidman Company was successful even in the darkness of the Great Depression, touring America and developing new styles and new works based not on old tales, but on current events and concerns. In the mid-1930s, Humphrey created the New Dance Trilogy, a triptych comprising With My Red Fires, New Dance, and the now-lost Theater Piece.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Humphrey