Music: Seaside Ballet

Birgit Cullberg is a bun-haired, 51-year-old Stockholm matron who once planned to be a librarian. But while she was studying literature at the University of Stockholm, she discovered that cataloguing was not really her game: at the remarkably late age of 25 she gave it up to become a dancer. Since then, as one of Europe's most talked-about choreographers, she has been busy constructing her own five-foot shelf of bibliophilic ballets: Medea, Romeo and Juliet, Miss Julie. Last week she was in Manhattan to witness the premiere by the American Ballet Theatre of her latest work, titled Lady from the...

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