CHRISTIAN SPUCK was born in Germany and studied at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. His dancing career began in 1993, when he performed with the Needcompany and ROSAS.

 

In 1995, Spuck joined the Stuttgarter Ballet, where he worked under the leadership of many eminent choreographers, including Glen Tetley, Robert North, John Cranko, Mauro Bigonzzetti, Martino Müller, and John Neumeier.

 

In 1996, Spuck created a pas de deux called Duo/Towards the Night for the Noverre Society's Young Choreographers; the piece was such a success that it was included in the repertoire of the Stuttgart Ballet and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. This was followed by more choreography for the Stuttgarter Ballet and for various ballet festivals. In 1998, the magazine Ballet International-Tanz Aktuell named Spuck the best up-and-coming choreographer of the 1997/98 season.

 

Spuck's first full-length ballet was entitled Lulu: A Monster Tragedy. This work, which, like many of Spuck's one-act pieces, was written for the Stuttgart Ballet, was based on a play by Frank Wedekind and choreographed to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, Alban Berg, and Arnold Schönberg. Spuck has also collaborated with the Stuttgarter Staatstheater, where he choreographed a dramatic production of The White Wolf in 2000 and participated in a production of Cupid and Death in 2002. He has staged his works at various theaters in Europe and the United States, and has created original choreography for ballet companies throughout the world, including Morphing Games, for Mauro Bigonzetti's Aterballetto in Reggio Emilia, in 1999; Adagio for Six Dancers, for the Choreographic Workshop of the New York City Ballet, in 2000; Chaconne, for the Mannheim Academy of Dance, in 2001; Grand Pas de Deux, for the Berlin State Opera Ballet, in 2003; and Shifting Portraits, for the Saarbrücken Ballet, in 2004. His ballet The Children, commissioned in 2004 by Martin Puttke, director of Essen's Aalto Ballet Theater, and based on a play by Edward Bond, was nominated for the Prix Benois de la Danse in February of 2005. In 2006, Spuck received the German Dance Prize for choreography.

 

Spuck most recent works include The Return of Ulysses (Royal Ballet of Flanders, 2006), The Sandman (Stuttgarter Ballet, 2006), Le Tableau Perdu (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2007), and Leonce and Lena (Stuttgarter Ballet, 2008), all of which met with great public and critical acclaim.