Christian Spuck

The German choreographer and opera director Spuck was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart and began his dance career with Jan Lauwers' Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's ROSAS-ensemble. In 1995, he became a member of the Stuttgarter Ballet, where he had already made his debut as a choreographer with his pas de deux Towards the Night in 1996. From 2001 to 2012 he served as the company’s resident choreographer. For the Stuttgarter Ballet he created no less than fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu: Eine Monstretragödie, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S.

Spuck has worked with numerous renowned dance companies all around the world. He created The Return of Ulysses for the Royal Ballet of Flanders and Woyzeck, after Georg Büchner, which premiered with the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo. The world premiere of Poppea//Poppea, which he created for Gauthier Dance, was named one of the most successful dance productions worldwide in 2010 by Dance Europe magazine. In 2011, the work was not only awarded the German Theater Prize “Der Faust”, but also the Italian Danza & Danza Award. His work is presented all around the world. His staging of the ballet Anna Karenina, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy, was taken over by several ballet companies, including the Norwegian National Ballet Oslo, the Stanislavski Theatre in Moscow, and the Korean National Ballet in Seoul.

But Spuck is more than a choreographer. In 2009 he brought the opera- and ballet company of the Staatstheater Stuttgart together for the very first time in Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice. He also directed several other opera’s, including Verdi's Falstaff for the Staatstheater Wiesbaden (2010), Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust (2014) and Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (2017) for the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Since 2012, he is the artistic director of the internationally acclaimed Ballett Zürich. Under his leadership the company has gained international recognition. Over the past 10 years, he created several productions for the company, including Romeo and Juliet, Nutcracker and Mouse King, Winterreise and Anna Karenina. In 2019, he staged Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, which was named 'production of the year' by German magazine Tanz. In early 2022, his latest ballet Monteverdi premiered at Ballett Zürich. Spuck has been appointed as the artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin as of season 2023/24.

DNO debut

13-01-2023