Ballett Zürich honours Hans Christian Andersen

Opera House, Zurich
February 22, 2025

Kim Brandstrup has created a new work for Ballett Zürich, Of Light, Wind and Waters, to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), whose fairy tales are known all over the world, and which have been translated into more than 125 languages.

Long-time British resident, Brandstrup was born in Denmark and grew up with Andersen’s stories, which are part of the country’s cultural heritage. In Of Light, Wind and Waters, he mixes three of them with a brief glimpse into Andersen’s working-class background and his relationship to his mother, a poor, uneducated, cleaning woman. Two of the three tales are well-known and have been the subject of many ballets. The third is rather less so.

In The Little Mermaid, the title character falls in love with a prince. She sacrifices her tail and tongue to become human, with the promise that if he loves her truly, she will stay a human being. But he then marries a princess, and she returns to the sea.

In The Snow Queen, Kay leaves his childhood sweetheart, Gerda, because he gets a splinter of a mirror in his eye that makes him see everything as evil, and a piece of ice in his heart. He follows the Snow Queen and stays in her castle of ice until Gerda finds him, melts his icy heart, makes him cry out the splinter and brings him back home.

The Shadow is a particularly dark tale about a poet whose shadow takes on a life of its own, gradually inverting their relationship so the writer becomes subservient to his former shadow. The shadow attracts the attention of a princess who, unable to tell the difference between the well-dressed shadow and a real man, agrees to marry the shadow. When the poet objects, the poet is dragged off to “be done away with,” while the princess and the shadow celebrate their wedding.

The ballet opens with Andersen’s mother, Shelby Williams, wiping real water off the floor and wringing her rag into a bucket. Andersen, Lucas Valente, watches near her and then moves around a group of working people, who keep lifting the bed he tries to rest on, so that he falls off. Perhaps an indication of how ill-fitted Andersen felt in society. The costumes are reminiscent of Andersen’s time.

Then the fairy tales start to unfold in Richard Hudson’s designs, especially his wonderful sets. The world is drawn bleak in hues of black, grey and white, the dancers opening and closing scenes by moving three similar-sized walls, two connected like an ‘L.’ The audience is partly drawn into the action by reflections of water shimmering on the auditorium ceiling, columns and balconies throughout.

While each tale is told in linear fashion, they are mixed together, so that a scene from one follows a scene from another. In between Andersen walks around, wearing his characteristic top hat. Sometimes he conveys the feeling that he is creating the action, sometimes it is as if he looks with wonder at what is happening.

The Little Mermaid, Max Richter, discovers her prince, Wei Chen, in a turbulent sea, a group of dancers moving with undulating movements like waves, dressed in costumes that make them look like seawater speckled with foam. His ship sinks and she saves him. The witch, who gives her the potion that turns her tail into legs, promises that her every step will feel like treading upon sharp knives. With her first probing steps, supporting herself against the wall, then collapsing, Richter makes this pain palpable.

The Snow Queen, Elena Vostrotina, is clad in a long white dress and a translucent hooded cape, which lends her the appearance of a big fluffy snowflake, a strong contrast to Kay, Mlindi Kulashe, and Ruka Nakagawa’s solidly human appearance as Gerda. The Snow Queen and Kay create exquisite otherworldly images in a bleak winter landscape.

But the most breathtaking images are created by The Poet, Esteban Berlanga, The Shadow, Karen Azatyan, and the incarnation of poetry, Nancy Osbaldeston. Brandstrup omits the princess, preferring to focus on the trio’s relationships. Osbaldeston and Berlanga may dance wide apart, but the shadow of his outstretched hand gently caresses her as if his shadow has truly come alive.

The dancers all looked wonderful in Brandstrup’s balletic movement vocabulary although some of the duets, especially between The Prince and The Little Mermaid, and The Poet and The Shadow, were too long and repetitive, stalling the stories.

The narration is excellent. It felt like watching three different series, jumping from one to the other, seemingly without any interrelationship, except for the ending. When the incarnation of poetry ascended from off stage, met the Poet and made him fly into the sky, doing somersaults mid-air, weightless and unrestrained, it was as if she was showing us, ‘This is what story telling can do. Free us from all restraints. Catapult us into other worlds.’

The music, a sound design by Ian Dearden, a long-time collaborator of Brandstrup, consisted primarily of excerpts from works by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen and British composer Anna Clyne (1980), mixed with music by a few others. It was very evocative and took us into the worlds of water, air and light.