Christian Spuck, the soft-spoken and self-effacing intendant of the Staatsballett Berlin since 2024, thinks of creations as homage. For him, the best compliment that can be paid to his stunningly literary ballet Bovary is that its audience might later pick up Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel.
He, in turn, chooses to compliment Hans Zender’s reworking of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, the inspiration for one of his signature pieces from his decade-plus leading Ballet Zurich, by saying it allows him to better hear Schubert. It’s a disarming conception of artistic innovation, as a service to a tradition reliant on innovation for its own perpetuation.
The approach perhaps helps to explain his great success at the Staatsballett, where his programme has struck a deft balance between the vibrant, contemporary dance from Sharon Eyal and William Forsythe (which retains something classical) and the repertoire of classical productions (which do seem to have a twist of the modern). Last year, the Staatsballet sold 98% of its tickets; already for the 2024/25 season, it has sold 93%. This month, Spuck brings to Berlin his Winterreise, with choreography set to Zender’s reinterpretation of Schubert’s song cycle of Wilhelm Müller poems.
What explains the current popularity of the Staatsballett? What is it offering the audience that’s bringing them in such droves?
Sometimes ballet companies and opera singers are placed, as we say in Germany, on a Sockel, a pedestal – a little bit up there. I think it’s very important that we want to be part of the city. We want to create the city, but we also want the city to create us. So we are looking for a dialogue, and we don’t want our audience to simply admire us. We are happy for feedback and comments. We appreciate if the city talks about us, and this can only happen if what we are doing is relevant for the city.
That’s why we have a lot of contemporary ballet productions here. We also have a lot of productions that have lots of electronic music in there, because there’s such a big scene of electronic music in Berlin – and it’s also some of the music that’s very close to my heart. And, on the other side, we also want to nurture the tradition of the ballet.
So we keep on performing Giselle and Swan Lake, and next season we bring a big production, Nurejew, which is also in the classical repertoire of movement. And it seems that the audience here in Berlin likes it. But I don’t trust success. I always have the feeling that every day we have to reinvent ourselves to find new things we can explore and we can present.
Where do you start when you think about composing a Staatsballett season?
The Staatsballett Berlin is the biggest [ballet] company in Germany. I think it’s our responsibility to move this art form further. That’s why we are trying to do – as much as possible – world premieres. When we think about the programme and the repertoire we’d like to create, I think, on the one hand, of the audience, but I also think of the dancers – what would the dancers like to perform and what is important and relevant for them.
And the dancers do like the classical repertoire, but are also super excited to work with William Forsythe, or they’re excited to make a new creation. Or they are very excited for a quite complex process working with Sharon Eyal. I would like to present dance forms and productions that have been important in the past, but also those which will nurture the way into the future.
How will story ballet look in a couple of years? How will it reflect things which are happening now in our society? There’s a lot, at the moment, that is moving society – and not only from the political aspect, but also from science, artificial intelligence. This is also influencing a lot. The days where ballet was just ballet are over. We have to absorb this. We have to understand this. We have to work with this.
Culture in general is the glue for democracy. It’s the glue for our society.
How do you think about the role ballet should play in relation to these spheres (city life, politics, science) as it has to compete with other modes of entertainment?
I see ballet as a form of music theatre. The wonderful thing about ballet and dance is the direct emotional communication between the performer and the audience. It does not need words. It may need music, which has a big emotional impact. No art form other than music can transport emotions so pure and so clear. And I think that with people on stage stepping into a dialogue with music, following the music or ignoring the music or any kind of relationship, it makes an art form that is very universal, because it doesn’t need language.
In the past, ballet companies were mainly committed to classical productions. I believe that one of the key moments was when the Paris Opera presented Le Sacre du printemps from Pina Bausch. That was the [beacon] of classical dance and of dance theatre. They suddenly made a fusion, and that made a big impact. And over the years, it developed that in all the ballet companies in the world the dancers must be so versatile. They have to be able to present different styles of dance. And I think the audience is hungry for everything. And the dancers are hungry for everything. A ballet performance or a dance performance that we produce should be entertaining and also bring a certain depth.
It can keep your mind off what’s going on in the world at the moment. In the Deutsche Oper, with 1,900 other people, you can really share a moment – which is something you can hardly do in the cinema, and you can’t do it at all when you’re at home watching TV. It’s a different feeling if you’re sitting in a concert hall or an opera house and you live through a performance. It’s connecting. People start talking about it. And that’s what we want. We want people to exchange emotions. We want to keep them opening up. For me, one of the most beautiful moments of this season was the 10th or 12th performance of Bovary.
A mum came up to me and said, “I just wanted to tell you, I have two sons. One is 14 and one is 15. They just went to the library and they got the book from Gustave Flaubert. They’re reading Gustave Flaubert at home now. Thank you so much for doing this.” This is important to me. I believe that culture in general is the glue for democracy. It’s the glue for our society. It makes people understand the value of living together, of sharing and taking care of each other. I think that’s the result of culture. And if culture gets shallow and is only about money and about quick success, that won’t work anymore. What’s happening at the Kennedy Center in the States? It’s exactly what should not happen. This is killing the culture for sure.
But in Madame Bovary, culture has a different valence – it’s something dangerous, seductive, the source of the illusions that drive its protagonist to suicide. How do you contend with the relationship between literature and dance?
When I read the book again, thinking about maybe making a ballet production about it, I was insecure. The language of Flaubert is such perfection. There’s so much happening in between the lines. It has so many colours. And it’s what it’s about – this woman who is becoming a sacrifice of herself, her deep unhappiness in the search for a love she cannot find. She cannot live, because she’s after an illusion – it’s so us today. It’s what we do every day on Instagram and Facebook.
We try to pretend who we are. Everybody is scared to show their true self in fear of being not accepted or not loved. So my team and I were asking ourselves, how can we make a ballet out of that? We found three layers of music with the Camille pop songs, the piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns, and the contemporary music by [György] Ligeti and Thierry Pécou. We then had something very emotional to play with. Working with literature is a source of inspiration, and we can only do an adaptation of it. It will never be on the same level – but that’s okay.
The Staatsballet’s next premiere is also a work of music and text. What drew you to Winterreise?
I found this composed interpretation from Hans Zender, which I thought was magnificent. It is a piano score set for a small orchestra ensemble and a tenor. Zender is finding new sounds that really represent the world of the poems. But the genius moment is that he makes me understand the original Schubert composition. You have to imagine that Schubert performed it for the first time himself in a living room, playing the piano and singing these songs himself, and the audience was completely shocked. The people were like, this is so scary. It was dark. It was about being lost.
Would the themes of Winterreise also apply to the future of the Staatsballett, or is that too gloomy a metaphor? How does the future of the Staatsballett look in the face of the culture cuts?
It’s been a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of worries – because it never starts with cutting the institution. It starts with getting less money, and suddenly you realise, okay, we cannot do that production anymore, or we have to do one premiere or less. Or we have to rely more on our repertoire because we don’t have the money [for new productions]. And then the repertoire could become too repetitive, and the audience could lose interest. The culture cuts are for some institutions an immediate death. For us it’s a slow death. It’s a bleeding out.
And I’m trying to explain that to them, and I’m not sure they know exactly what they’re doing. This is the threat we have at the moment – that we’re just going to bleed out. We still don’t know what money we will get in 2026 or 2027. We don’t have a financial plan for this. I’m working with almost 120 people here, who are full of passion for the art we are creating and that gives me positive energy. I know that culture and dance and what we are doing can’t be destroyed. In times of crisis, some of the best art has been born. So I’m not too worried about the art. I’m just worried about an institution which is really blossoming at the moment, and could disappear.
- Staatsoper, Unter den Linden 7, Mitte, Winterreise (May 14, 17, 23, 29), German with English surtitles, details.
