The Information on `Mats Ek/Cullberg Ballet'

What Is It?

Cullberg Ballet's retrospective for celebrated Swedish choreographer, Mats Ek, which includes his radical reworkings of 19th-century ballets (he relocated Giselle to an asylum), as well as his own one-act pieces including She Was Black and Solo for Two.

What They Say About It

"Ek has a vivid theatricality and gift for genuine surprises... his theatricality is matched by a full-out dance language that merges the sophisticated with the primitive... I became aware of just how much meaning Ek can compress into his pieces," Nadine Meisner, The Independent.

"In performance we see a fantasy world so unwaveringly strange and characters so imperiously dysfunctional we're genuinely compelled... Ek may ask his dancers to go to some very odd places but the Cullberg Ballet follow him with ardent alacrity," Judith Mackrell, The Guardian.

"[In Giselle], the storytelling is so shockingly fresh and absorbing that you forget you are hearing Adolphe Adam's glorious score in recorded form. The Cullberg company's dancing is so thrillingly clear, full-out and wide-open that it shouts," Donald Hutera, The Times.

Where You Can See It

The Cullberg Ballet present Sleeping Beauty at The Edinburgh Playhouse (0131-473 2000) until Thur