Marie í Dali

Marie í Dali's designs spans many genres from feature film produciton design to classical ballet design but opera have become her dominant work. Marie studied theatre science at Copenhagen University before moving to London. She studied theatre design at Wimbledon School of Arts and her professional career began with "Andorra" at Hampstead Theatre in London.

Marie's first major commisions in theatre includes ”Queen of Spades” at the Royal Danish opera, and "Der Rosenkavalier ̈ for Opera National de Lyon ̈ Other notable works include "The firebird ̈ with Alexei Ratmansky at the Royal Swedish Ballet ”A Clockwork Orange” at Dramaten in Stockholm, “The Nutcracker” a hiphop version by Sten Koerner, which has been restaged six years running and returned again at the Docken in 2015 and 16. In the lighter genre Marie designed the set and costumes for C. Nielsen's “Maskarade” 2003/2021, “My fair Lady” directed by Kasper Holten for the Royal Danish Opera and ¨Midt om natten¨ musical version from 2018/21 created by Heinrich Christensen for Tivoli on tour was designed by Marie.

Marie has an on-going design-collaboration with Steffen Aarfing. Their work includes the production design for the film ”I am Dina” and Wagner's ”Der Ring des Nibelungen” for the Royal Danish Opera, directed by Kasper Holten, 2003-06. Marie also designed the costumes for the JUAN-opera movie by Kasper Holten and worked as production designer on The sci-fi movie-thriller “the Substitute” by Ole Bornedal.

She has had great success with her historical costume designs in Molieres Le Misantrope at the Royal Playhouse and Tartuffe at Grønnegårds Teatret, both directed by Thomas Bendixen. Also the designs for Fanny and Alexander in Bergen shows her sharp control over form, style and characters description. More absurd visual concepts were dominant doing newly written opera “Other cities” Andy Pape 2015 and “Hamlet in Absentia” Huge Gudmundsson 2017, both winning/nominated best musical production of the year.
In later years she has reviving the Bournonville ballet-tradition internationally - ¨Napoli¨, ¨la Sylphide¨ and the lesser known ¨Ponte Molle¨ - with concern of the specific Danish feel together with Frank Andersen. This year Marie created her first perforce piece in collaboration with Frederiksbergs festspil and Copenhagen Philharmonic for ¨Mathers 9th Symphony.

She is in an ongoing process of design for Wagners Ring cycle again, die Valkyrie 2017, and das Reingold 2019, Siegfried 2022. And too in close artistic collaboration with Louise Alenius / Sasha Milavic Davies on yet another opera '¨Manualen¨ for the Royal Danish Opera.

(Photo by Steffen Aarfing)