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spring 2005

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The Royal Danish Ballet protects and preserves a repertoire that is the memory of a memory. In his ballets, August Bournonville preserved the memory of his own training in Paris during the 1820s, a period that witnessed the transition between post-revolutionary ballet d'action, with its classical and mythological themes, and Romantic ballet, with its glorification of emotion, imagination and intuition. The Bournonville heritage is the window into that very special time in dance history.

 

Heart of Bournonville
The Royal Danish Ballet is the only place in the world where August Bournonville's ballets and legacy could have endured

By: William Antony

"In Paris, Bournonville studied with the greatest male dancers of the old regime and partnered Marie Taglioni, the harbinger of the new style which would revolutionize ballet and then leave it high and dry 20 years later. When Bournonville returned to Denmark, he distilled his French experiences and poured then into the works that he created as the ballet master of the Royal Danish Ballet.

Bournonville, who lived between 1805 and 1879, was the son of a French father and a Swedish mother, but he considered himself thoroughly Danish, and his work is a harmonization of the French style of dancing with Nordic social and cultural history.

Ballet came to Denmark, as it did to other European countries, through the French ballet de cour. These elaborate entertainments performed by members of the court mixed dance, song and poetry. In 1596, the Danish King Christian IV set the tone for subsequent court entertainments when he celebrated his coronation in a lavish spectacle of music and dance. In 1634, he outdid himself by organizing a grand ballet de cour to celebrate his son's wedding. The extravaganza lasted three days and is estimated to have been the most expensive court festival ever held in Denmark. By the mid-16th century, professional dancers began to take over for the courtiers.

When the first Danish-language theatre first Royal Theatre was built in 1748 on one side of Kongens Nytorv, the King's New Square. A new Royal Theatre, the current one, was built in 1874 next to the first one, which was torn down.


The Royal Theatre became the centre of Denmark's intellectual activity. The auditorium functioned as kind of a club where Copenhagen's artists spent many of their evenings. Still, it is significant that the majority of the audience came from the middle class.

The theatre developed as home to ballet, opera, drama and the Royal Orchestra. After a ballet school was founded in 1771, the "ballet children" were called upon to fill out the stage picture as extras in all of the performing arts, and seven
or eight-year-old students often performed important children's roles.
In the beginning, the ballets were small and mostly made by foreign ballet masters with foreign soloists and a Danish corps de ballet. When the Italian Vincenzo Galeotti arrived in Copenhagen in 1775, the ballet began to flourish. He trained Danish soloists, improved the corps de ballet and created a repertoire of more than 50 ballets. An exceptional choreographer, he incorporated the latest trends, which called for ballet to be more than a technical display, and for the dance and drama to combine as a unity. Galeotti strove for a naturalness and clarity of movement that was tailored to the music. He wanted ballet to be an expressive form, not merely a suite of dances on a theme without a story. Only one of Galeotti's works, the short comic, The Whims of Cupid and the Ballet-Master, has survived in something like its original form. Though it is probably not completely representative of Galeotti's style, which emphasized heroic and tragic themes, it has remained in the company's repertoire ever since it was created in 1786 and is actually the world's oldest ballet danced in an unbroken tradition.

In 1792, a French dancer, Antoine Bournonville, who had been performing in Stockholm, joined the Danish Ballet. He succeeded Galeotti in 1816, but he was a mediocre choreographer and administrator. The ballet declined under Antoine Bournonville, but he made one unique contribution: he was the father of August Bournonville.

August Bournonville was born in 1805 and grew up in the theatre, performing children's roles in plays and

comic operas. He was an avid reader and student of music and art. He entered the ballet school at the age of eight and was taught by his father and Galeotti. When he joined the company at 15, he was immediately given a scholarship to study in Paris for six months, where he studied with the legendary dancers Auguste Vestris and Pierre Gardel. After dancing in Denmark for four years, he returned to Paris, became a member of the Paris Opéra Ballet and later toured Europe. This experience outside Denmark was crucial to his formation as an artist.

Bournonville absorbed the French style at a time before the advent of French Romantic ballet, during which the ballerina replaced the male dancer as the centre of attention. In Denmark, as in Russia, male dancers retained their prominence
beside the ballerina. Elsewhere in Europe, by 1850, the male dancer had become an endangered species.During his time in France and England, Bournonville made the acquaintance of many of the theatrical, literary and musical luminaries of
the time. He could have continued his international career as a dancer but chose to return to Copenhagen, although with a sophisticated, cosmopolitan view of the world as well as a technique that far surpassed the level of other Danish dancers.
He was motivated by a strong feeling that Denmark was where he belonged, but his engagement to a Swedish woman, Helene Frederikke, was another deciding factor. Their marriage lasted nearly 50 years and produced seven children, two of whom pursued artistic careers.

Bournonville was ambitious, energetic and intelligent, and he knew that he had the talent to be the boss. So, in 1830, he accepted the position of leading male soloist and ballet master. He understood that his main task would be to build a repertoire of audience-pleasing works and to bring the corps de ballet up to the level that his ballets required.

Bournonville's experiences abroad shaped his work, but his very Danish outlook on life and art was equally important. His work reflected the artistic and social currents of his time, particularly those of the Danish middle class, and he was heavily influenced by contemporary Danish artists. Bournonville was serious about art and his beloved country, but most of all he was a great man of the theatre. He understood his middle-class, bourgeois public, and he knew that his first job was to entertain. This mixture of theatrical craft, French ballet style and Danish cultural values gave birth to the Bournonville style.
Most of all, it's a model of modesty, courtesy and discipline, with typically fleet footwork and port de bras as a gesture of generosity and welcome. Bournonville wanted the dancing and mime to look natural and effortless. His choreography
achieves the illusion of an apparently unending flow of movement supported by incredible lightness, brilliance and ease. While striving to entertain, he also wanted "to elevate the mind, and to refresh the senses." In rejecting French Romanticism's preoccupation with world-weariness and disintegration, he supplied most of his works with happy endings.

 Bournonville explored many genres in the more than 50 ballets he created. He followed the trend of the time in his use of Nordic myths and folktales in such ballets as The Valkyrie, The Lay of Thrym and A Folk Tale. He made ballets in an exotic mode, such as Abdallah, Napoli and Far from Denmark. In others, such as Kermesse in Bruges, he worked in the field of poetic realism. With La Sylphide, he introduced French Romanticism to the Danish ballet stage. 

In the 19th century, Denmark was outside the mainstream of European activity; the waves of history washing over Europe
were no more than ripples by the time they reached Scandinavia. After Bournonville's retirement in 1877 and death in 1879, the Danish ballet remained isolated from the developments, decadence and rebirth of continental ballet. Further, there was no heir apparent to Bournonville, the choreographer. As a result, his ballets formed the core of the Danish Ballet's repertoire. Thus they were preserved in step, gesture and style. It's not so much a question of authenticity as legitimacy: the Royal Danish Ballet has dedicated itself to the preservation of its unique heritage. While there are differing opinions about how the legacy should be treated, this theatre in this country is really the only place in the world where these ballets could have survived. Denmark is the land that shaped Bournonville and his aesthetic expression, and it continues to shape the dancers in whose muscles the ballets live.

Maybe Bournonville's ultimate triumph is that his ballets have conquered time and fashion, the savage enemies of ballet. They still enchant us today. Bournonville gave his ballets a heart, and it is still beating.  <end>

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As Frank Andersen prepares for the Third Bournonville Festival, he strives to balance traditional Danish dance and what today's
audience expects.

 

 

Dancing the Danish Way
By: William Antony

Frank Andersen, the Royal Danish Ballet's director, has been working day and night on the
Third Bournonville Festival, and as if that were not enough, he's also acting as co-artistic
director for the opening performance of Denmark's brand new opera house on the Copenhagen
waterfront. His smile is sincere but weary as we settle into the premature darkness of a Nordic
winter evening. A few candles struggle bravely on the coffee table in his office. "Oh, I didn't
light these for you," he says laughing. "It's something we Danes do to make things a little cozier during our long, winter nights. And during the short summer ones, too."

The festival will be an ambitious, week-long party with performances of nine different

Bournonville ballets and a closing gala. For Andersen, it is a summing up as well as a point of departure - into the brave, new world of 21st century ballet.

"The Royal Danish Ballet is extraordinarily fortunate to have the Bournonville tradition," he says, "but finding a balance between tradition and what today's audience expects is difficult. My idea is to place Bournonville in the centre and work outward from there. We are dancing with bare feet and in boots. We are dancing in wooden shoes and character shoes. We are in soft ballet
shoes and on pointe. We are mastering all of these styles because it is demanded of us by the
audience and the critics."

But while the Danish audience demands more variety, and may even be slightly tired of the
Bournonville jewels, an international audience is going to turn up in Copenhagen between June 3-11 expecting what only the Danes can deliver: Bournonville, pure from the source.

In one sense, the Royal Danish Ballet represents the oldest continuous ballet tradition in the world, with living roots in the 18th century. While most of the work of Bournonville's contemporaries has disappeared, some 10 or 12 of his own ballets (depending on whether you count
several fragments as ballets) are preserved. Denmark has offered a sheltered harbour for the master's works, but ballet conservation is always the victim of human foibles and changing tastes. Although what we are seeing today is as authentic as possible, it is important to remember that it has been constantly refracted through the prism of changing theatrical fashion.

For Andersen, it is a question of keeping the ballets fresh as audience's tastes change, and young dancers demand to use the full range of
their physicality, which is often at odds with the tradition. But for him it is also a question of remembering what has been passed down, dancer to dancer, over the generations. He tries, along with his trusted colleagues, to communicate not only steps, but also an attitude, an atmosphere, perhaps an insight into Denmark's history and culture.

Andersen recalls, "When I was a young dancer in the company with Anne Marie Vessel, Eva Kloborg and Dinna Bjørn, there was the
older generation above us: Kirsten Ralov, Hans Brenaa, Henning Kronstam, Fredbjørn Bjørnson, Niels Bjørn Larsen.
Somehow, they all vanished between the end of the 1980s and the middle of the 1990s. Were we ready to take over? I don't think so. We weren't really given the chance to learn how to do it."

For that reason, the festival becomes for Andersen more than just the Royal Danish Ballet's show-and-tell. "As far as securing the future, I am taking steps with the company in that direction right now," he says. "I think it's important to give people the space to learn how to do this. So I'm starting out with Lis Jeppesen, Thomas Lund, Petrusjka Broholm, Heidi
Ryom, Eva Kloborg, Martin James, Christina Nilsson. They're all proving to be valuable ballet masters who are able to carry the torch."

From this perspective, the festival is more than a celebration. It is instruction for the audience (this is how we did it) and for the dancers (this is why). It is the chance to consider the time and culture from which Bournonville's ballets sprung, Denmark's so-called Golden Age, an extraordinary blossoming of all the arts, during which Bournonville worked alongside other Danish artists such as writer H. C. Andersen (also born in 1805), sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, poet and theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig, and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Bournonville's ballets, along with the poetry of Adam Oehlenschläger and the dramas of Johan Ludvig Heiberg, were central to the Royal Theatre during the first half of the 19th century.

Bournonville's dancers shared a common schooling and a specifically Danish cultural outlook. They shared the experience of being citizens of a small country - hence a certain modesty - and a
strong national identity resulting from the relative stability, prosperity and social justice with which the country has been blessed through most of its history.

The Danes were and still are patriotic, although it's bad form to admit it. Showing off is frowned upon. Boasting will get you excluded from the group in a hurry. It's the law, the Law of Jante,
Jantelov.
Danes generally reject any claim of specialness. This might be one of the reasons that Bournonville abhorred all unnecessary technical display and demanded that the dancers submit their personalities and skills to the overall harmony of the production.

Another important part of Danish ballet is the family feeling that exists between the dancers and audience members, most of whom have been going to the Royal Theatre all their lives. They follow a dancer from his first appearance as a child to his mature years as a character dancer. Until recently, the Royal Danish Ballet presented a closed door to foreign dancers, letting graduates from its school feed naturally into the company.

The Danes prefer their own dancers, but not out
of xenophobia. Unfortunately, foreign artists
often leave after a few seasons, and lasting bonds with the audience can't be established. The exotic is fine on occasion, but a great deal of Danish theatre culture relies on the comfort of the
familiar. It has to do with hygge, a term for which Danes swear there is no English equivalent, but which means something like coziness, comfort, familiarity. Hygge is reflected in the candles on Andersen's coffee table.

With its tradition reaching back more than two centuries, the Royal Danish Ballet provides the conditions in which artists can be nurtured from the time they enter the ballet school as children to their maturity. It is from this childhood
experience that Danish dancers learn to feel at home on stage. In this atmosphere, the students absorb a knowledge and appreciation of many aspects of the theatre.

Although Danish dancers must retire at the age of 40, some dancers find a second career in the glow of accumulated kinetic wisdom and theatrical experience as character dancers, teachers and ballet masters. As they pass along their dancing roles to younger performers, they provide a living link with tradition. The company becomes the dancers' second family, and some stay for 50, 60, even 70 years. Beyond the steps, these are the values that the Danish Ballet will be trying to project during the festival. This is what Frank Andersen is trying to explain in the theatre that is just starting to come to life again for the evening's performance of Nikolaj Hübbe's recent restaging of La Sylphide.

"Obviously we have a link to Bournonville that nobody else has. Those links are the style and the system of training. If you go to a ballet competition and see 25 versions of the Black Swan pas de deux, they will all be different. But if you see 10 versions of a solo from La Sylphide, they will be 90 per cent the same." Yet, although we know most of Bournonville's
original choreography, we can't know how his ballets actually looked in his lifetime. Over the years, the ballets were shortened and altered here and there to stay current with changing tastes. Dancers changed things, both intentionally and unintentionally. And the dancers changed. They look different today and can simply do more. Even if we could see the
ballets as Bournonville saw them, would we find them interesting or perhaps slightly silly and boring. In the end though, these questions are academic. Yes, threads unravel, but the cloth rests on the shoulders of today's Danish dancers. They breathe the same air as Bournonville did, and their instincts have been tutored by a Danish way of looking at things that hasn't changed all that much.

In addition to the nine ballets and related lectures and exhibits, the bicentennial festivities are also the impetus for a new video documentation of the Bournonville classes, or
schools as they are called in Denmark. The company will perform one of the six classes live each day of the festival. They will be a little bit less but also a little bit more than the two previous attempts, in 1967 and 1979, to preserve
the classes organized by Bournonville's successor, Hans Beck.

They are the link. Frank Andersen rubs his eyes, slowly reviving for the evening's responsibilities. "We have a past, a present and a future. And Bournonville touches them all." <end>

For more information about the Third Bournonville Festival, the repertoire and related programmes, visit the festival's web site at www.bournonvillefestival.com.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: Spring 2005 Issue [top]

Features

  • All the Right Moves - The Australian Ballet School at 40
    by Lee Christofis

  • Moving Pictures - Festival of Dance on Film & Video
    by Paula Citron

  • Alicia Markova Remembered
    by Kathrine Sorley Walker

Departments
  • Dance Notes
  • Obituaries
  • Commentaries from Vancouver, the Prairies, Montreal, Toronto, New York, San Fransico, Boston, Britain, Italy, Denmark, France, Australia and Cuba.
  • Reviews of Flamenco Rarsario, Uzume Tailko, Royal Winnipeg Ballet & Alberta Ballet, Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, Sydney Dance Company and Royal New Zealand Ballet
  • DVD Reviews
    by Michael Crabb & Kaija Pepper
  • Notebook
    by Michael Crabb