While still a student he worked with small contemporary companies, eventually founding his own in 1985. More recently, he has created full-length pieces for many international companies such as the Royal Danish Ballet , the Geneva Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. His most recent project, The Return of Don Juan , based on Ingmar Bergman's film The Devil's Eye, features the Royal Ballet's Russian star, Irek Mukhamedov, in the title role. Brandstrup's Saints and Shadows explores the theme of loss and mourning in a idiosyncratic rereading of Cinderella amid the Mexican Day of of the Dead festival. The deceased ascend and descend from the beyond via a roughly hewn ladder.
Mourners whirl as if driven to excess by grief.
The realm of death is contrasted with the shrill atmosphere of a fiesta. Three patrons of a seedy bar project an attitude of aggression and eroticism. A ghost who manipulates his lover from beyond the grave suggests that the living are connected to the dead through memory. At times however, the ballet invests too heavily in vaguely symbolic props that detract from the dancing. With less specifics of plot, Brandstrup's Elegy , evokes a Zen-like atmosphere underlined by a sober palette of grays and simple wooden structures of the setting.