Bournonville: Will an August Tradition Endure?

AUGUST BOURNONVILLE (1805-1879) was banished from the kingdom, endured a period of exile, survived two rebellious ballerinas, the Danish Revolution of 1848, and fifty years of backstage politics. Artist and benevolent despot, he turned a provincial ballet company into one of the world's greatest. He created over 100 ballets and divertissements, five generations of Royal Danish Ballet dancers, and an aesthetic that still clings to the walls of Copenhagen's Royal Theatre.

Although he knew full well that ballets seldom outlive their choreographers, Bournonville was an optimist. When he retired, he prepared for performance sixteen of the ballets he thought most likely to last. Although about half of these, including the serious, mythological, and historical ballets, disappeared in the 1930s, more of his work still exists in something resembling its original form than that of any other nineteenth-century choreographer: seven complete ballets, excerpts from two more, and a half-dozen or so divertissements.

The ballets that remain are mostly fairy tales and comedies and are unlike anything else in dance. They're the product of a delightful imagination, full of beautiful classical dancing and inventive movement, clear and inspired storytelling, and dozens of very human characters. Bournonville's ballets have survived realism, modernism, and the Nazi Occupation, but there's now a real fear that a theater bureaucracy determined to produce efficient art at all costs, together with the current trend toward internationalization that's sweeping the ballet world like the Ebola virus, may finally do them in.

Bournonville's importance to the company extends far beyond his ballets. There have been many world-class Danish virtuosos, but the company has been equally respected for fine performances in dramatic ballets, and this springs directly from Bournonville. The Royal Danish Ballet has been known for producing not only great technicians, but dancers with distinctive personalities who made these ballets live as they returned again and again to the works through long and rich careers.

The style has changed over the years. Bournonville's beautiful curly line has been stretched and straightened--but there's a set of dance values that's remained: ballon; lightness and fleet footwork; a dramatic, yet modest, performing style. There are jumps, beats, and small, quick footwork in Bournonville that contemporary choreographers have abandoned. The dances still delight, and still astound.

Bournonville had very definite ideas about what he wanted. He used pointe work sparingly, only when necessary to the plot; insisted on clean execution; resisted supported adagio. He so detested gratuitous virtuosity that he made his ballerinas sew their underskirts taut to prevent them from showing off too-high extensions. Such a lion is not easily brought to earth.

To celebrate the millennium, the Royal Danish Ballet presented a Bournonville Week Jan. 22-30, dancing eight performances of five ballets. This is the third such celebration. The original Bournonville Festival was held in 1979 in honor of the 100th anniversary of his death, and was designed by then-artistic director Henning Kronstam to restore as much of the Bournonville repertory as possible and revitalize the company's classical dancing. The second, in 1992, under Frank Andersen's direction, celebrated the 150th birthday of Napoli. The current Bournonville Week (not quite a festival, as three of the extant ballets were not danced) was planned by the last director, Maina Gielgud, undoubtedly to try to get the company, once again, back in touch with its heritage. Gielgud did not stay in the job long enough to oversee what she planned; that has been left to the current director, Aage Thordal-Christensen, who began a three-year term in August 1999. Unlike the 1979 Festival, which was a journey of discovery for both the city and 200 foreign journalists, or the 1992 Festival, which was one big, happy party, Bournonville Week was very low key, geared more to the city than to foreigners (comparatively few foreign critics attended).

While it's always a privilege to have the opportunity to see a solid week of great ballets and many fine performances, Bournonville has not emerged unscathed from the upheavals of the past seven years, during which the directorship has changed hands four times. None of the ballets equaled past performances. The one new staging, a rethinking of Kermesse in Bruges, was the most misguided, but the other ballets (Napoli, A Folk Tale, La Sylphide, Konservatoriet) have also seen better days.

The productions themselves were, for the most part, solid or at least salvageable. The problem was in the direction. Not only was the action muddy and unfocused, but the dancers often seemed lost at sea, unsure of their characterizations and sometimes resorting to clowning. Except for Kermesse, the company had rehearsed these works only for two weeks, and it showed.

If the mime sections often looked like structured improv, the dance sections were accurate, though stylistically bland. The dancing of the corps in La Sylphide and Konservatoriet showed that the RDB dances in GlobalGlot now; the Danish style, which has been slipping away for years, is all but gone. It's not the dancers' native language any more, but an accent assumed for special occasions. You can practically hear them thinking, "Oops! Remember to round the arms." Torsos seemed stiff and tight and the dancing itself big and loose; an unhappy combination.

The week began with the new production of The Kermesse in Bruges (1851). Hans Brenaa's staging of this ballet had been one of the hits of the 1979 Festival. Then, it was a rollicking comedy and a full-company showcase. Kermesse is a fairy tale, the story of three brothers who are rewarded by a grateful alchemist with three gifts: one, a ring that makes its owner irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex; the second, a sword that will vanquish all enemies; and the third, to the youngest brother, Carelis (in love with the alchemist's daughter Eleonora), a viola da gamba that makes everyone dance when he plays it. After a series of comic misadventures, moderation triumphs: the youngest brother wins love without trickery, and saves his family through the power of art. Brenaa saw this as a tale of the dangers of extremes and the restoration of harmony, and told it deftly and with an underlying subtlety that is missing from the current staging. In the new Kermesse, Dinna Bjorn (the current artistic director of the Norwegian Ballet, whom Gielgud had appointed as a Bournonville consultant); Anne Marie Vessel Schluter, who heads the Royal Danish Ballet School; and Jan Maagaard, from the Royal Theatre's drama department, restored some mime bits and two scenes that had been cut in previous productions, when the ballet was tightened to make it more contemporary. A new dissonant and watery orchestration that deflated much of the ballet's comedy and a new, rather bland divertissement by Bjorn (substituted for one that, while not by Bournonville, had been part of the ballet for a century) were not generally well-received.

A Folk Tale (1854) was, in some ways, in better shape than it had been in 1992 when it was newly revived. The production is by former artistic director Andersen and Vessel Schluter, with designs by Queen Margrethe II in children's storybook style. The stagers returned to source material to examine what had been left out in recent productions and restored one lovely scene where the trolls, heartbroken that they have lost their beloved Hilda (the human child they kidnapped at birth), leave Denmark. In 1992, the first act was a bit frantic; it's been calmed now. And several bright ideas scattered here and there that never quite worked have been pruned away. But the second act's drunken troll-betrothal party was so coarse that at times it was actually lewd, the beautiful court dance at Hilda's wedding to Junker Ove that closes the ballet looked as though it was dying to burst into a "real waltz," and the famous pas de sept made little impact.

Napoli (1842) has deteriorated badly. When this production (by Andersen and Bjorn) was unveiled two years ago, one Danish critic wrote, "Is This Bournonville's Funeral Feast?" All of the beauties of the 1992 production's first act, then staged by Henning Kronstam, are gone: its poetry and subtlety (the way the ballabile bubbled around the act like the sea, cresting and subsiding), the musicality of the mime, the boiling energy, and taut, dramatic action have disappeared. The second act is another reconstruction by Bjorn (the original had been thrown out in the 1930s, supposedly because it had too much dancing in it). Bjorn has reworked this act since `92, but retained her central idea that Teresina is sexually attracted to Golfo in his Blue Grotto. Golfo is now more pop star than sea monster--sexy, but hardly frightening--and the act, with a very long dance for the corps by Bjorn, seems endless and so loosely staged as to drown the drama. Luckily, the third act was in relatively good shape, especially the tarantella. If the ballets themselves were disappointing, there were some fine performances, chief among them: Silja Schandorff's slightly wild, playful Sylph; Sorella Englund's terrifying and tragic Madge; Kenneth Greve's gracious, gorgeous Junker Ove, and Kirsten Simone's warm and comforting nurse, in A Folk Tale; Rose Gad's beautifully musical dancing in the Kermesse divertissement; Alexei Ratmansky's fiery tarantella in Napoli. Lis Jeppesen's Viderik, the sweet troll in Folk Tale (usually danced by a man), was convincingly boyish and in love. Jeppesen's Fru Von Everdingen, the rich widow who falls for the cloddish brother in Kermesse, was beautiful and stuck-up, but also vulnerable. Peter Bo Bendixen's performance as Geert (said cloddish brother) was the surprise of the festival. Usually cast as the handsome villain, Bendixen as Geert was a bumpkin with a heart of gold. In small roles, Martin Vedel gave fleshed-out performances in everything he did, and Marianne Rindholt, as the housekeeper in Kermesse, was a model of humanity and restraint, and a reminder of days gone by.

There are at least four dancers in their 20s who could ensure Bournonville's survival for another generation. Thomas Lund and Tina Hojlund were impressive in a variety of roles (Carelis and Eleonora in Kermesse, in different casts; Gurn and Effie, solos in Konservatoriet and Napoli). Both are extremely musical, and both create multi-dimensional characters, dancing as though they were living the roles onstage. Gudrun Bojesen, with her pure technique and modest comportment, has great potential. Mads Blankstrup, who danced James, Gennaro, and Carelis as well as several solos, is a charming virtuoso with all the right instincts. Both Bojesen and Blankstrup seemed to lack only guidance to give great performances. Lack of good coaching has been the most consistent complaint of the dancers since 1993, and this week amply demonstrated why. Letting the dancers work things out for themselves ensures that everyone in a ballet is at cross purposes, and coaching by video is not coaching. The ballets were once guarded by dancers who could remember the steps, mime, and thousands of details, walk into a studio, and stage them from memory. One frequently hears, "Hans [Brenaa] and Henning [Kronstam] are dead, and those days are gone," but these two men were not the last Danish artists on the face of the planet. There are several people, such as the dancers who learned the leading roles from the great coaches, who have the artistry to take their place.

There were a few disappointments. Johan Kobborg, the most promising young dancer from the 1992 festival and now a principal with England's Royal Ballet as well as his home company, danced his solos in La Sylphide and Napoli brilliantly, but seemed to disappear during the rest of the ballets. Caroline Cavallo, an American dancer who's been with the company for twelve years and has risen to principal, was a sweet and charming soloist, but in leading roles (La Sylphide, Napoli, Konservatoriet), she seemed too straightforward and, sadly, not very interesting.

The biggest shock, though, was to see the ballets without the older dancers that were, for so long, part of the company's glory and its identity. The pension age was lowered to 40 in 1992, and a mass "retirement" of more than twenty-five dancers that year not only created a huge hole in the roster that the school was unprepared to fill, but left dozens of ballets--not just the Bournonville ones--underpopulated. The two lovesick middle-aged spinsters in Kermesse aren't as funny danced by younger women, and seeing young people with padded bodies and cotton in their cheeks was something one expected in small, new companies with no tradition, but never in Denmark.

To his credit, Aage Thordal-Christensen, who inherited a company buffeted by change and dissension, has restored morale in a very short time. "Things are better," Lis Jeppesen said. "It's calmer now."

In an interview Thordal-Christensen spoke of the importance of Bournonville to the repertory, saying, as Danish artistic directors almost always do, that "Bournonville is our great luggage," meaning it's what they take when they go around the world, but also implying that the ballets can be a burden. Thordal-Christensen was not particularly known as a Bournonville dancer, and it's too early to tell how the repertory will fare under his hand. There was a school performance one afternoon that showed well over a dozen promising children. Vessel Schluter, one staff member who really does fight for Bournonville, is trying to keep his style and spirit alive there.

During the festival, there were exhibits at museums and libraries. You could find Bournonville tucked in odd corners throughout the city--a local newspaper lobby here, a photo gallery there. Reviews were mixed, with one of the leading critics being generally supportive; the other, and most of those writing for smaller papers, much more harsh. Local ballet fans had mixed opinions as well. "It's better. It really is," one said to me after the second Kermesse. "We're on our way back up now." Another, two nights later, took a more pessimistic view: "We're giving Bournonville five years with this crew." As is often the case, visitors who had never seen the ballets before were delighted with them, those who remembered the company from previous festivals were generally less so.

The Royal Danish Ballet has seemed determined to transform itself into The National Ballet of Anywhere Else for years now. The dancers are often ambivalent about Bournonville. There are more foreign dancers than ever before (about a third of the company); they have not grown up with the ballets, nor can they expect to grow old in them. The Danish dancers sometimes seem to find him an unwelcome limitation, but do understand what he's done for them. As one Danish principal put it, "Without Bournonville, we'd be just another nothing little company."

The company's leaders have five years to ponder that thought before the next Festival, planned for 2005 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Bournonville's birth, when we're promised all the Bournonville ballets, including the "minor" ones: The King's Volunteers on Amager (one of the most perfectly constructed nineteenth-century ballets still extant), Far From Denmark, and La Ventana, which has not been danced since the 1980s. If the company puts Bournonville back in the basement and only drags him out again five years from now, hoping the ballets will somehow stage themselves, it won't be a very happy birthday party. There's also a real danger that some of these ballets will disappear after that date, if presented in such a neglected state. No other big anniversaries are in sight, and it will be all too easy to say that the ballets have outlived their time. Whether Bournonville will make it through the age of video coaching and globalization is now an open question. As they have been for more than 150 years, the company's fortunes are inextricably linked to August Bournonville's fate.

RELATED ARTICLE: Danish tradition all in the family

WHEN GUDRUN Bojesen was a little girl, she would often visit her great-aunt on Sunday afternoon and show her what she had learned in school, as hundreds of Danish children do. Bojesen's great-aunt was Edel Pedersen, an early twentieth-century Danish ballerina known as an excellent Bournonville stylist. Pedersen studied with Fokine when the great Ballets Russes choreographer lived in Copenhagen for two years in the 1920s. "My great-aunt knew some secrets they don't teach us now," said Bojesen in a recent interview at Copenhagen's Royal Theatre. "In her day, they knew how to stay up in the air when they jumped. You breathe at the top of the jump. She told me how to do it, but I've never had the time to practice it."

Bojesen, 23, has been cast in solos in Peter Martins's production of Swan Lake (both the pas de trois and pas de quatre), as well as Jiri Kylian's Return to the Strange Land, which she found especially inspiring. She was appointed soloist the first day of Bournonville Week and danced several roles, including the female leads in The Kermesse in Bruges and A Folk Tale. "My great-aunt wanted to dance these roles, but never had the opportunity. So I feel that I'm dancing for her, dancing her dream"

A true Nordic beauty, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and rosewater skin, Bojesen's lightness and musicality, as well as her lovely line and modest manner, make her ideal for Bournonville heroines. "Both these girls are very alike, very sweet," Bojesen said of Eleonora and Hilda. "I think Bournonville was very simple. People try to make him complex, but I think he was very simple"

Asked if she thought Bournonville would be around for her great-granddaughter to dance, Bojesen replied, "Not if they keep taking in foreign dancers, because they don't like the ballets. They don't want to do trolls or peasants, and they don't aspire to dance the leading roles."

Bojesen studied at the Royal Danish Ballet School from the age of 8. Her teachers were Anne Marie Vessel Schluter, Ulla Skow, Margaret Mercier and, as an aspirant, Colleen Neary. Neary is the teacher who has meant the most to her, "because the others would hold you back. They'd only let you do two pirouettes, and they had to be nice, but Colleen just lets you go free."

Alexandra Tomalonis

RELATED ARTICLE: Jeppesen keeps the flame

LIS JEPPESEN, 43, was the darling of the 1979 Bournonville Festival and the American tours that followed it. She danced the ballerina roles in nearly every Bournonville ballet: the Sylph, Hilda in A Folk Tale, Eleonora in Kermesse in Bruges, Teresina in Napoli, and one of the boy cadets in Far From Denmark. In Bournonville roles, her dancing was as light and soft as smoke, and she is one of the most musical dancers the company has ever produced.

Judging by the applause and the stomps on the wooden floor that Danish audiences use to show appreciation, Jeppesen was the star of the recently concluded Bournonville Week as well, dancing an elegant and vulnerable Fru Van Everdingen in Kermesse in Bruges and, in a complete change of pace, Viderik, the sweet troll, in A Folk Tale. The Bournonville repertory has dozens of interesting roles for mature dancers, and assuming character parts is a natural career path for a Danish ballerina. "We all have to do what we can to keep the tradition," she said in a recent interview. "For me, that's staying and dancing in these ballets, and being someone the younger dancers can look to."

Jeppesen has been on stage since she was 4, appearing as a singer for several years before she entered the Royal Danish Ballet at 9. Her teacher was Edite Frandsen, who taught strict Vaganova style. There were no formal Bournonville classes at the school when Jeppesen was coming up, yet she was regarded as the finest Bournonville stylist of her generation. "That's because of Hans [Brenaa]. He showed me the style. I don't think there would be a problem with the foreign dancers today if we had the proper instruktors. They just need to be shown what to do."

Very much a daughter of Bournonville, Jeppesen loves his ballets and the company's Bournonville tradition. She's aware that that tradition is in danger in an age of increasing internationalization, but believes the ballets will last, "because they're good, and because audiences will always love stories."

Jeppesen has done some coaching of her own and would like to do more. She taught her own brand of Bournonville classes for a few weeks to prepare the company for Bournonville Week, and hopes to continue this. "I want to do what Henning [Kronstam] did. He never taught a Bournonville class in his life, but he worked the combinations into class. Sometimes not even Bournonville combinations, but steps done in the Bournonville manner. That is how we kept the style for so long, and also how we could dance other things."

Alexandra Tomalonis