Attitudes.

Odd question. Would August Bournonville, that extraordinary Danish choreographer and exemplar of the essence of 19th-century Romantic ballet, have expected the international dance world to have celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth with quite the vigor, devotion, and pleasure that characterized the Third Bournonville Festival at the Royal Theater, Copenhagen, with eight performances between June 3 and June 11, each and every night in the presence of Queen Margrethe II? Quite possibly.

Yet perhaps even Bournonville would have been startled off his ormolu pedestal by the fervor evoked by this panoply of Bournonvilliana so long after his death. For, unlike such predecessors as his celebrated teacher Auguste Vestris, here was Bournonville alive and kicking onstage, not a dance figure being feted merely for historical importance.

Having followed the Royal Danish Ballet since 1953, I often find myself thinking the more it changes the more it stays the same. It is still--and not just at festival time--dominated by the elusive but very active presence of the Bournonville repertoire, recently and aptly described by John Rockwell in The New York Times as constituting the company's "blessing and its curse." Here is a unique and still dominant collection of Danish 19th-century ballets in great condition. That's the blessing. The curse is that they are, to 21st-century eyes, old-fashioned.

The mime skills of the Royal Danish, helped by the abiding presence of older character performers, are still peerless, and the male dancers remain a notch or two above their female counterparts.

Despite a roster during the 1950s including such fine women as Kirsten Ralov, Mona Vangsaa, Margrethe Schanne, Inge Sand, and later Kirsten Simone, the Danish men have always come first. When it started touring internationally, its principal dancer, ranking in solitary splendor, was a man--Borge Ralov. It is no accident that in the festival souvenir program, among the 10 photographs of Danish dancers who have left their mark on the international scene, they are all males (including Peter Martins, Ib Andersen, Erik Bruhn, Peter Schaufuss, Nikolaj Hubbe, and Johan Kobborg). The only Danish ballerina to leave a real impression on the 20th-century ballet world was Toni Lander--and before she achieved it she had to be exiled from Denmark during a scandal involving her husband, the then company director Harald Lander.

Yet if the company never really changes--it does, naturally, have its ups and downs--the fortunate thing is that it never actually needs to change. It can stay as sweet as it is, and foreign journalists, particularly American dance critics, originally led by John Martin, Walter Terry, Doris Hering, and others in 1956, will always have a warm spot for it in their collective heart.

The strange thing is that nowadays the face that the Danes turn to the world is only one aspect of a twin-sided medallion, the side marked "Bournonville--for export only," or, to be fairer, "Bournonville--for export especially." In addition to the three Bournonville Festivals (1979, 1992, and this year) its recent visits to the United States have featured an almost all-Bournonville policy, with perhaps a few performances of Harald Lander's Etudes. Similarly, the Bournonville Festivals have also failed to show the range of the company, while, of course, offering a unique insight into 19th-century Romantic ballet. But at the end of the 10 days, might not even the most ardent Bournonville devotee feel just a little Bournonvilled out?

In the early days of the Royal Danish Ballet's exposure to the outside world, starting in 1950, the company held annual ballet festivals which, while showcasing Bournonville, also put him into perspective in the light of the whole repertoire. So one would be watching Bournonville in the special Danish context of Vincenzo Galeotti's 1786 divertissement The Whims of Cupid and the Balletmaster, the oldest work maintained in the current repertoire, and of their own stagings of Michel Fokine's Petrouchka, David Lichine's Graduation Ball, Lander's Etudes, Roland Petit's full-evening The Three Musketeers, and a few contemporary Danish works.

The peculiar thing is that one possibly got a better sense--if not such a scholarly saturation--of Bournonville in varied programming than in the comprehensive package provided by the festivals. It would be valuable to see the company dance Giselle just before or after La Sylphide. Already they are talking of another Bournonville Festival. Yes, but might it not be a better idea to return to the 1950s and '60s and offer a ballet smorgasbord? It could be more fun, and even more instructive.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes also covers dance and theater for the New York Post.