Timeless Classics and Contemporary Masters: What to See at Staatsballett Berlin in the 2026/27 Season
Autumn brings the start of a new theatre season. Ballet and opera companies carefully shape their programmes, hoping to attract both regular theatregoers and new audiences. To help you choose, we have selected five productions from the repertoire of Staatsballett Berlin that deserve special attention this season.
This year, Staatsballett Berlin will delight audiences with ten productions: three premieres and seven revivals from the company’s repertoire. The 2026/27 season opened with a timeless classic — Giselle.
Bovary. Weronika Frodyma, Ensemble. Photo: Serghei Gherciu
Giselle (8, 11, 23, 29 and 30 October 2026)
If you feel you have seen Giselle a hundred times and that this ballet can no longer surprise you, do not rush to that conclusion. Giselle undoubtedly holds an honoured place among the five oldest ballets to have survived to the present day. But its venerable age is an asset rather than a drawback for this masterpiece of Romanticism.
Berlin alone has seen six versions of Giselle. Each interpretation has brought new nuances, shades and meanings to this familiar story. And every pairing of Giselle and Albrecht offers a fresh perspective on ballet lovers’ eternal debate: was Albrecht a scoundrel, and did he deserve Giselle’s forgiveness?
Giselle. Polina Semionova and Martin ten Kortenaar. Photo: Admill Kuyler
French dancer and choreographer Patrice Bart, who worked with Rudolf Nureyev, first staged his version of Giselle at the Paris Opera in 1991 and later brought it to Berlin. Alongside newly expanded peasant dances, Bart’s version contains plenty of intriguing details that distinguish his Giselle from a dozen others. The storyline involving Albrecht’s sword, for example, is developed with particular clarity and consistency: the sword plays much the same role in the ballet as Desdemona’s handkerchief does in Othello.
Beyond the additional shades Patrice Bart has given the ballet’s central characters, Giselle at Staatsballett Berlin also offers distinctly different casts. Seasoned ballerinas Iana Salenko and Polina Semionova bring interpretations honed over many years. For freshness and an irrepressible fire in the eyes, look to Marina Duarte’s debut performances on 23 and 29 October.
Giselle. Vera Segova and Ensemble. Photo: Mariia Kulchytska
On 12 September, during the annual open day at Staatsoper Unter den Linden, audiences could enjoy an open rehearsal of Giselle with Marina Duarte and her coach, Nadja Saidakova. So many people wanted even a fleeting glimpse of this mysterious process that spectators stood in the aisles on every level of the theatre. Duarte’s dancing drew applause from the packed auditorium. To Marina, we say: Toi, toi, toi! And to audiences, we recommend witnessing the birth of a new Berlin Giselle.
The Nutcracker (November and December 2026, January 2027)
The first premiere of the 2026/27 season will be The Nutcracker, staged by Staatsballett Berlin’s Artistic Director, Christian Spuck. It opens on 27 November at Deutsche Oper Berlin. There are even more interpretations of this fairy tale than there are versions of Giselle. And Christian Spuck’s will probably look quite unlike most of them.
If you expect The Nutcracker to be an entirely carefree Christmas fairy tale, be prepared to discover its dark side, too. The choreographer takes this naive and, at times, "plastic" ballet out of the commercial world and returns it to the original, darker world of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Instead of the familiar warm and festive atmosphere, you will encounter The Nutcracker in the signature colour palette of Spuck’s ballets: black and purple. Sentimentality will give way to the grotesque, where audiences, like all children at some point, will have to find the boundary between fantasy and frightening reality.
Der Nussknacker. Ballett Zürich. Photo: Gregory Batardon
Christian Spuck first presented his vision of The Nutcracker in Zurich back in 2017. Even then, he restored the essential story of Princess Pirlipat and the Krakatuk nut, which Marius Petipa, the creator of the original libretto, had considered unnecessary. For Berlin, Spuck will do more than simply transfer his earlier ballet: he will create a revised production tailored to the company’s strengths.
Marie is at the heart of the Berlin production. We will experience events through her eyes, on the boundary between feverish dreams and waking life. Spuck also promises to preserve the festive magic. Moving sets, inspired by the mechanics of old theatre scenery, will transform the stage into new worlds before the audience’s eyes.
There is nothing more wonderful than losing yourself in the festive atmosphere of The Nutcracker as Christmas Eve approaches! But there will always be time for that, if you have not done so already. Seeing the story of Marie and the Nutcracker through Hoffmann’s eyes, however, is a pleasure all its own. Why not look beyond the familiar music this time and discover the unsettling side of this much-loved German fairy tale?
Der Nussknacker. Ballett Zürich. Photo: Gregory Batardon
William Forsythe II (March, April and June 2027)
The season’s second premiere is inspired by the work of the great William Forsythe and bears his name: William Forsythe II. Forsythe is a living legend, a defining choreographer of both the twentieth century and our own time. He is also one of a vanishing breed. Forsythe belongs to a remarkable generation of choreographers that also includes John Neumeier, Jiří Kylián and Hans van Manen. These masters changed our understanding of what ballet could be. And how fortunate we are to live in Forsythe’s time, as he continues to create, work and search for new possibilities in a human body we might have thought had long since revealed all its secrets.
William Forsythe. Photo: Julian Gabriel Richte
Following the success of its first Forsythe programme in the 2023/24 season, the company continues to introduce audiences to his choreography. This time, the programme brings together two legendary works: Of Any If And and Artifact Suite. It opens on 19 March at Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Long ago, George Balanchine brought about a revolution of sorts in ballet: he tilted the perfect vertical axis around which the symmetry of classical ballet, and even of the human body, is built through the turnout of the arms and legs. Forsythe went further than Balanchine. He not only displaced this axis but pushed that displacement to its limits. The dancers literally stretch one another’s bodies in a physical struggle. One movement too far, and they will fall.
Forsythe himself keeps returning to his works and changing them: he worked on Artifact for more than thirty years. An encounter with his choreography is therefore never simply a journey into ballet history. And this season, it is the Berlin company’s turn to explore the limits of its abilities alongside Forsythe.
Nureyev (April and May 2027)
The Berlin premiere of Nureyev in 2026 was perhaps the brightest event of the previous ballet season, not only in Germany but across Europe. Once upon a time, this monumental work, jointly created by director Kirill Serebrennikov, choreographer Yuri Possokhov and composer Ilya Demutsky, was the crown jewel of the Bolshoi Theatre’s repertoire. Yet alongside its extraordinary success at home, the ballet, like its protagonist, faced persecution and cancellations, ultimately leading to a complete ban on its performance in Russia.
Fortunately for ballet lovers and dance critics, Christian Spuck had visited Moscow and seen this ambitious biographical production for himself. Perhaps only the Artistic Director of Staatsballett Berlin and Kirill Serebrennikov know how much effort it took to bring the ballet back into the light and give it a new life in the West, just as Rudolf Nureyev himself once found. That makes it all the more precious to audiences in the free world that one of the defining ballets of our century now has a place in Berlin’s repertoire.
Nurejev. David Soares. Photo: Carlos Quezada
The story of Rudolf Nureyev’s extraordinary life unfolds through an auction at which his personal belongings are sold. As is often the case with Serebrennikov’s work, the ballet assumes that its audience is familiar with its protagonist’s biography. The libretto, choreography, music, costumes and sets are all steeped in references and allusions to Nureyev’s life. Every detail, every gesture is in its rightful place and connected to the dancer’s story.
Nureyev is more than a ballet: it is a production spanning several genres, impossible to fully take in, feel and understand in a single viewing. A work of this scale demands repeated visits and consideration from new perspectives. So if you saw this ballet last season, do not skip it this time.
Nurejev. Odin Biron. Photo: Carlos Quezada
There are not enough words in the world to thank Christian Spuck for rescuing this ballet. We can only hope that his collaboration with Serebrennikov will continue. Alongside Nureyev, Serebrennikov and Possokhov also created A Hero of Our Time for the Bolshoi Theatre. We would love to see that work return to the stage one day, too. But it would be no less exciting to discover an entirely new work by Serebrennikov, created this time with Christian Spuck!
Der Liebhaber (June and July 2027)
Staatsballett Berlin’s third and final premiere of the season is Der Liebhaber by Marco Goecke, based on Marguerite Duras’s novel The Lover. The Berlin premiere takes place on 5 June at Staatsoper Unter den Linden; the ballet was first presented in Hanover in 2021.
German choreographer Marco Goecke has long since developed a dance language of his own, one that is difficult to mistake for anyone else’s. His career includes work with Stuttgart Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater, as well as dozens of productions for companies around the world. But to get to know him, it is more important to understand how his dancers move.
"Der Liebhaber. Staatsballett Hannover. Photo: Ralf Mohr
In Goecke’s ballets, the body seems to become an exposed nerve. Hands move at astonishing speed, shoulders twitch, the torso vibrates, and a sudden stillness becomes as expressive as an entire dance phrase. For Der Liebhaber, this language seems particularly apt. Duras’s partly autobiographical novel tells the story of an affair between a fifteen-year-old French girl and a wealthy Chinese man considerably older than her. Love is entangled with money, dependence on family and loneliness, while memories return in fragments long after the events themselves.
Music by Debussy, Ravel, Chopin and other composers will become part of this story. Goecke is particularly interested in the dependencies that bind people: to family, to the expectations of others, to someone they love. Yet he also finds hope in the novel that a feeling can endure for decades. This work seems poised to provide a fitting finale to a rich ballet season.
"Der Liebhaber. Staatsballett Hannover. Photo: Ralf Mohr
Text: Margarita Makhrina
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