Compañía Nacional de Danza

In this ballet, Mats Ek does not shrink from the bleak or tragic aspects of the story, although the characters seem to have been taken from a sandpit or a children’s book: here are both a quick version of the ladder of life its various stages, from birth to maturity and old age and a solo with “Bird”, a little girl who suddenly sprouts metre long white hair and dances a last, frenetic dance. Old Children is dedicated to Birgit Cullberg, since when he was deep in work Mats Ek realised that his mother was present in the ballet in various ways, but he insists that it is not a form of illustrated biography. Here, there are not ciphers for the audience to decode, no riddles to solve. The ballet emphasise the often complex relationships of the adult world in a form that is now deliberately naive, now symbolic.