Staatsballett Karlsruhe

In 1977, Germinal Casado founded a company named Danza Viva within the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe Thanks to its highly noticed creations, the company is welcomed in the biggest international stages.
In 2003, Birgit Keil, former principal ballerina of the Stuttgart Ballet, started directing the company, which has lost none of its prestige and has officially become a State ballet. The Staatsballett Karlsruhe is made up of 30 dancers and, for bigger productions, master’s students from the Tanzes Akademie in Mannheim.
Since 2019, former American principal dancer Bridget Breiner has taken over the artistic direction of the company. The chief choreographer has built a contemporary company with roots in classical ballet: contemporary dance is part of the work, but always with respect to the classical lines. Bridget Breiner received two DER FAUST theatre awards in the ”best choreography” category: for Ruß – Eine Geschichte von Aschenputtel in 2013 and for Charlotte Salomon: Der Tod und die Malerin in 2015.
Through pieces that aim to inspire faith and hope, the company wants to use dance to tell stories and to highlight the diversity of the current choreographic features. In order to promote its repertoire and its hallmark, the company now aims to export itself outside Germany to meet European audiences.

The Staatsballett Karlsruhe will present several new works this season in addition to its current repertoire, including David Dawson’s contemporary reinterpretation of Giselle, that will premiere in Karlsruhe on 19 November 2022. Removed from the romantic context of the 19th century, the ballet is transformed into a timeless love parable.
Bridget Breiner’s creation of Maria Stuart in April 2023 will echo the characters of Giselle and Cinderella. A strong new female figure in the repertoire, the Queen of Scots, whose claim to the English crown teetered the power structure of two nations, is honoured by this reinterpretation of Friedrich Schiller’s drama.
At the beginning of 2023, the company will leave Germany to present Ruß – Eine Geschichte von Aschenputtel at the Opéra de Massy, in France, on 3 and 4 February.

« [La] ”[The] company, of which a few members remain from Birgit Keil’s previous direction, has been very well welcomed by the audience after three years and despite considerably reduced performances due to the lockdown, and some of them have been greeted with many enthusiastic shouts and applause.”

Udo Klebes, onlinemerker.com