Royal Danish Ballet.

Royal Danish Ballet, Bournonville Festival Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark June 3-4, 2005

If The Kermesse in Bruges and Napoli were novels, we would call them page-turners. Like his compatriot Hans Christian Andersen, August Bournonville was a master storyteller, using the language of mime and classical dance to tell tales of good triumphing over evil, and love, if not art, conquering all.

The Third Bournonville Festival's La Ventana was the exception. Virtually plotless--and yet charming--the new sets by Christian Friedlander render its Spanish setting Goya-esque, as the small cast performs a story of first love in Bournonville's restrained version of Spanish dancing. As the nameless Senorita, Gitte Lindstrom deployed her pointes like a flamenco dancer's heels, hard against the floor, a contrast to the precise, skimming pointe work typical of Bournonville style. A mirror dance, in which she pique turns dreamily, her back mostly to the audience and her movement "reflected" by Camilla Ruelykke as her image, seems a very modern concept for 1856.

Kermesse, newly designed by Rikke Juellund with a modern, stripped-down rendering of the medieval city, has an elaborate comic plot that slaps down greed, lampoons seduction, and suggests the supernatural. In the opening variations the dancers display the ballon, epaulement, precise footwork, open port de bras, and joie de vivre and generosity of movement that exemplify Bournonville style.

Mime, organically connected to the dancing by music (every gesture performed on a beat), tells of an alchemist's magical gifts to three brothers who rescue his daughter from kidnappers. As the youngest, Kristoffer Sakurai, making his debut, started raggedly but soon hit his stride, performing the controlled jumps and rapid batterie with modest insouciance, his acting textured with youthful impulse. From the smallest child to the oldest street vendor, believable characters populated the stage. In particular, Mogens Boesen's clarity of gesture as the frightened father and sinister alchemist--not to mention Thomas Lund's blending of high comedy and buoyant dancing as the hapless middle brother seduced by a countess--were Bournonville revealed.

In the full-length Napoli, Lund played Gennaro, the fisherman in love with the gorgeous Teresina (the fleet-footed Tina Hojlund). He combined the generosity, charm, and restraint of Bournonville technique--an open-armed port de bras that embraces the viewer; jumps that are not so much virtuosic as precise--with the thespian skills of a method actor. Teresina's loss at sea creates a tempest of grief performed by Lund and Jette Buchwald, as her mother, with the uncontrolled passion of modern dance.

The modernism carries over into former RDB dancer Dinna Bjorn's restaging of Act II, set in an undersea grotto, where more than a tinge of Freud is expressed in the sea demon Golfo's presumed awakening of Teresina's dark side. Much stage business by Gennaro with a sacred amulet frees Teresina from Golfo's spell (an expression of Bournonville's faith as well as his take on Italian Catholicism), and the young couple sails away to dance another day. Hojlund's conflicted dancing, as she's pulled from Golfo's spell by inches, updates this undersea version of Giselle. The grand finale, with its lighthearted variations, punctuates the happy ending and, in 19th-century literary fashion, ties up the loose ends with Danish ribbons.

The remainder of the nine-day festival is reviewed by Clive Barnes on www.dancemagazine.com.

For more information: www.bournonvillefestival.com