“I wanted to do something big and wild and different. Something with water!” said choreographer Alexander Ekman and filled the Main Stage at the Oslo Opera House with 5,000 litres of water. 

In A Swan Lake, his new full-length work created for the Norwegian National Ballet, the dancers are joined on stage by actors, a soprano, musicians and 1,000 rubber ducks. Alexander Ekman is an award-winning choreographer, whose work is internationally acclaimed for its inventiveness, musicality and humour. With a score by Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson and costumes by Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov, A Swan Lake takes a fresh and witty look at Tchaikovsky‘s ballet of all ballets. 

Alexander Ekman is an international choreographer/director creating  pieces for theatres, opera houses and museums. He also directs films and  creates live performances/events in pop up locations around the world.  Ekman has created and collaborated with around 45 dance companies  worldwide including the Royal Swedish Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Compañia  Nacional de Danza Goteborg Ballet, Iceland Dance Company, Bern Ballet,  Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, Ballet de l’Opéra du Rhin, The Norwegian  National Ballet, Boston Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Sydney Dance  Company, The Royal Ballet of Denmark and Vienna Ballet. He has also  created for festivals the French Europa Danse and the Athens  International Dance Festival.
In 2005, at the International  Choreography Competition of Hannover, Ekman was awarded first prize by  the critics, and won second prize with Swingle Sisters (one of the  ballets from his Sisters trilogy). During 2011 Ekman also worked as a  teacher/choreographer at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York  City. Ekman’s 2010 work Cacti has become a worldwide hit and has been  performed by 15 dance companies including Sydney Dance Company. The work  was nominated for the Dutch Zwaan dance prize in 2010, the National  Dance Award (UK) in 2012, and also for the prestigious British Olivier  Award. In 2009 Ekman created the dance film 40 Meters Under for and with  Cullberg Ballet, which was broadcasted on national Swedish television.  That autumn he collaborated with the renowned Swedish choreographer Mats  Ek on video projections for Ek’s play Håll
Plats. Ekman also created an  installation for the Modern Museum in Stockholm with dancers of  Cullberg Ballet.
In 2012 he collaborated with Alicia Keys and  incorporated her into his work Tuplet. In 2014 Ekman created his own  version of Swan Lake, a new take on the most famous ballet of them all. A  Swan Lake received enormous attention worldwide and returned to the  Oslo Opera House in 2016. Ekman filled the stage with 6,000 litres of  water creating a real lake on stage. A Swan Lake is available on DVD and  the documentary Rare Birds by TM Rives shows the process of how it  became possible to create a lake inside an opera house. In 2015 Ekman  created his own version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal  Swedish Ballet. In September of that year he received the Swedish Medea  Award for “Inventor and renewer”. In 2016, he received the German  theatre award “Der Faust” for his ballet COW for the Semperoper Ballet.

Source: Opéra de Paris

Jeff Tudor is an award-winning director, producer and writer. His first  feature, Coppelia, mixes live action dance and animation, in a  collaboration with Steven De Beul and Ben Tesseur of Beast Animation.

Before  Coppelia, Jeff was known for capturing and adapting outstanding dance,  music and theatre productions for the screen. He has directed many  multi-camera, feature-length performance films for television and event  cinema.

Awards include the Rose d'Or (Category: Arts), Golden  Prague International Television Festival Czech Crystal (Category:  Performing Arts), Dance Screen Award (Category: Best Live Performance  Relay & Camera Re-Work) and San Francisco Dance Film Festival  (Category: Performance Capture).

Jeff is co-founder of Dutch-British production company 3 minutes West.

EuroArts  Music is one of the worldwide leading independent producers and rights  owners of audio-visual classical music programs for TV and DVD.
EuroArts Music International was founded in 1979 by Bernd Hellthaler.  Soon, the company became internationally renowned for the production  and distribution of audio-visual classical music recordings, acclaimed  documentaries, Opera and Ballet films, jazz as well as other music and  art programs for TV and home video.
Today, the company sells the catalogues of EuroArts Music, Stingray,  Montréal and London, Idéale Audience, Paris and Loft, Munich. EuroArts  Music also distributes programs of various independent producers. It is  active in TV licensing to more than 150 clients in 40 countries around  the world, in DVD as well as in digital distribution on several  platforms. The current TV broadcast catalogue contains about 1800 titles  or more than 2500 hours of music material that includes all noteworthy  artists in classical and contemporary music of the past five decades.  The EuroArts label distributes its catalogue with more than 700 titles  on Blu-ray Disc and DVD worldwide through distribution partners Warner  Classics (worldwide exclusive Japan and South Korea), King Records,  Japan and Aulos, Korea.
Our Berlin-based production team have – over a period of more than 30  years – built a reputation for meeting the highest artistic standards,  as well as for a never ending innovative spirit. Multi-camera music  events have been produced in countries all over the world, amongst them  China, Japan, Russia, USA, Israel, Palestine, Turkey and Argentina.  EuroArts Music was the first company to produce a live concert, which  was broadcast in 50 cinemas all over Europe.
Since 1990, EuroArts Music has a close cooperation with the Berliner  Philharmoniker on prestigious regular concert events, such as the annual  Europakonzert, the famous open air concerts at the Waldbühne, Berlin  and the annual New Year’s Eve concerts.
It has relations to prestigious festivals like the Verbier Festival,  and to several opera houses like San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera,  Berliner Staatsoper, Teatro Real or Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.
Owing to long lasting relationships with artists and conductors like  Sir Simon Rattle, Valery Gergiev, the late Claudio Abbado, Daniel  Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, with renowned directors Bruno Monsaingeon and  Peter Rosen and world-class performers such as Martha Argerich,  Anne-Sophie Mutter, Grigory Sokolov and András Schiff or, from the  younger generation, Lang Lang, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Sol Gabetta,  Gustavo Dudamel, Leonidas Kavakos and the ever young Menahem Pressler -  the company has become one of the few big names in the classical music  industry.
Innovation and quality characterize the company’s business. The  achievements include numerous awards such as a Peabody Award and Grammy®  Award Nomination (for “Blue Note – A Story of Modern Jazz”), Emmy  Awards (for “Robbie Robertson" and “Knowledge is the Beginning”), the  Grammy® Award (for “Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of  Mahagonny”), the National Education Award (USA), three German ECHOs, a  Dance Screen Award (for “C(h)oeurs”) and the Grand Prix at the Golden  Prague Festival 2015 for “Menahem Pressler - The life I love”.
EuroArts Music always strives to spearhead innovation: for instance  with impressive 3D productions and new sound productions, such as the  first HD Audio on Blu-ray Disc or the first-ever 4k opera release on  Ultra HD Blu-ray.

More information: euroarts.com