Antropolog i marken

(Anthropologist in the field)

Ballet for 8 dancers and 1 violin.

Premiere: 15th December 1995, Next Wave, The Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen.


In December 1995 The Royal Danish Ballet invited 7 young choreographers, among them Anders Christiansen, to create new choreography for the ensemble.


Concept and choreography: Anders Christiansen
Dancers: Diana Cuni, Caroline Cavallo, Louise Midjord, Tina Højlund, Charlotte Aamand, Tommy Frishøj, Johan Kobborg, and others.
Violin: Anne Eltard
Composition: Anne Eltard
Set Design: Nanna Arnfred
Production: The Royal Danish Ballet

Duration: 22 minutes

Press quotes:

”Why has one never before seen pilots on a ballet stage? It is not like there is a lack of strange characters possessed by the dream of flight. In the middle of sylphs with killer looks and floppy arms and Scots with foot tapping jigs, come a flock of pilots plopping down onto the Royal stage.

The occasion is Next Wave where seven choreographers from within and without the walls, in continuation of last year's Next Wave, have been given the chance to challenge the great ballet machinery. The man behind the pilots, Anders Christiansen, who provides the evening's most original contribution, even goes so far as to call his work Antropolog i marken (Anthropologist in the field). As an outsider he has dared to enter the field of Romantic ballet, selected the most singular sylphs and planted them in front of a backdrop of a howling stag. One almost swoons.

It is a world without heaven. Accompanied by wolf cries and live-wire violin. The sylphs stand at attention with robust little-girl charm and gripping dumb-speech. Ominous ghosts along with pilots on a commando raid in the land of the dead. It is the dark side of the ballet, its longing, pain and death combined with its impossible starry-eyed primitiveness, is here - as with Mats Ek and Jorma Uotinen - displayed in such a way that dimples and heart strings are wrung and wrenched.”
Monna Dithmer (Politiken, 17th December 1995)


”Anders Christiansen made the most of the opportunity and in Antropolog i marken, he had Tommy Frishøi with parachute and note book entering into the idyllic green landscape where sylphs and Scotsmen made leaps and twists. It was a humorous version of the classical ballet's strange world until suddenly the image transformed to white and wonderful poetry. The shift took place when the anthropologist, fascinated, studied the ballerina Diana Cuni, and entered her world in a mystic ritual, where it was perhaps her who offered her own world with the sacrificial lamb in her arms.”
Erik Aschengreen (Berlingske Tidende, 17th December, 1995)


”The modern dreamer, Anders Christiansen, managed to entertain, touch and fascinate with his extremely original idea of a Scottish ballet romance in Antropolog i marken, where a marriageable Tommy Frishøi wearing a pilot's helmet and dragging his parachute after him like a veil, falls from the sky and arrives in a strange universe peopled by floppy, hopping swanfeather-donning sylphs and despairing, toppling Jameses in kilts. It ended as it must, with a wedding and a lamb in the lap of Diana Cunis' heart-rending Lilliputian sylph! Anne Eltard bewitched the obscure scenery with wolf howls and echoing whalesong from her electric violin.”
Majbrit Hjelmsbo (Teater Et, February 1996)


"...Anders Christiansen's debut at Kongens Nytorv opens with a virtuoso parody of "La Sylphide" and the vocabulary of the romantic ballet. Just like visiting a mausoleum for classical dance. However it is not all satire and laughter, the piece also works as a sequence of secret and spectral imagery full of melancholy and pain."
Henrik Lyding ( Jyllands-Posten, 17th December 1995)

Venues:

Next Wave / Ny Scene, The Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen, 15-17 December 1995.


Antropolog i marken was produced with support from KODA's kollektive båndmidler.



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