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Royal Danish Ballet Style


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A rivoltade is a step in which a (usually) male dancer does a grand battement to the front, then jumps off the supporting leg and brings it up and over the raised leg either straight or passing through retiré, and then lands on the former supporting leg, making it the supporting leg again. The Blue Skater does some in "Les Patineurs". The dancer seems to be jumping over his own leg (and he is!) and turning over in the air in the process.

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Guest Aleksander

Coupe is MOVEMENT, not the POSITION ! :o

The other thing is that lots of people (incl. ballet teachers ) are thinking, that coupe (which means "cut") is position. :devil:

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I saw her post about pirouettes sur le coup de pied a couple of years ago -- they are still (nominally) a demicaractere step; she was talking about teaching them.  They're being phased out in Denmark now, too, though.  They were taken out of some variations (sadly, I must admit, by Brenaa, I was told by one of his assistants).

:mondieu: Aw, man! :) Why would anyone want to reduce the expressive possibilities of the art? :shrug: Please explain! While I much prefer the look of the toe-to-knee position for pirouettes in most Petipa and later works, the softer, gentler position has an important use.

SAVE THE COU-DE-PIED PIROUETTE!

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Bournonville taught it from the ground up! His classes, though, were three hours long and of the Sink or Swim ungraded variety. Everybody from the newest beginner to the prima ballerina took the same class. I don't know of contemporary descriptions of how he managed such a class, but I can imagine that it must have been something like "Konservatoriet", when the balletchildren are brought out to do a petit batterie combination, which today is often given to the men. I liked it better with the kids. Post-Volkova, I think it comes in sometime when the kids are about 13, but I'm not sure anymore.

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I love this thread!!!

The pirouettes sur le coup de pied are basic in Checchetti's syllabus (style, school, method?? Alexandra??). If I remember correctly, students start working on them when they are 13 (Elementary). I loved to turn sur le coup de pied! More spinning!

I have always thought of the links between Cecchetti and Bournonville styles. 'Konservatoriet' is like an advanced class in Cechhetti. There is nothing remarked in this thread as characteristic of Bournonville that cannot characterise Ceccheti: the emphasis on épaulement, the importance of the coup de pied on relevé or on plié, the importance of the plié (it was very hard to do that impossible series of 'pirouette from preparation in grand plié, finishing in one of the positions of the body'), the foot work, battery and petit allegro, not very high lines in arabesque... I think that that pas de bourré fleuret is in Cecchetti's vocabulary 'pas de bourré en tournant'... And we didn't like to dance on pointe. It is true, Alexandra, it ruins the jump.

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Cecchetti studied in Copenhagen and danced there (not at the Royal Danish, but in another theater) for two years. He once wrote that his teaching "owed everything to Bournonville except the barre." (Bournonville's barre was notoriously short.)

I once showed "Konservatoriet" to a Cecchetti specialist, a teacher, who thought it looked as though both methods had derived from the same source, but weren't quite the same, but "Konservatoriet" is said to be a class of auguste Vestris's (modified for the stage). The solo dancer's variation, I'm told, was one of Jules Perrot's.

There were some things in the older techniques, Grissi, that have been lost, as you point out.

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Thank you, Alexandra, for your brilliancy.

Surely, Bournonville style marked Cecchetti for life. Only two years in Denmark! And he developped a style with all those Bournonville details! I didn't know of the barre. Thank you, that was very interesting.

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Sally Streets teaches sur-le-coup-de-pied pirouettes, and is constantly coming up with ways of having us do LOW COUPES (which is local shorthand for sur le cou de pied back), often as a preparation for attitude back, and just as often as the position AFTER attitude back, to train the pelvis to feel how it has to change

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I think a definite style is the jumps. Always big and controlled. IMO The women's leg muscles seem more muscular than others, perhaps from training to jump???

Also, precision in their technique. Always clean and getting to 5th; no cheating.

And, as said, the softness of arms. In males, their '1st position' arms or 'prepatory position' but right outside the legs are rounded and held.

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