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Awards to Schandorff and Hübbe


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At the Reumert Theatre Awards, Silja Schandorff won the title of Dancer of the year. Other nominees were Thomas Lund and Caroline Petter, the Schaufuss Ballet. Nikolaj Hübbe won the major award (sort of Lifetime Achiwement) and Kenneth Kreutzmann won best dance perfrmance for Make up. Hübbe and Schandorff danced Apollons solo and the pas de deux.

On Friday Thomas Lund danced his first and very impressive Lenskij in Onegin.

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Thanks for that, Effy! I didn't know Schandorff was dancing enough these days to be nominated :) So that's very good news. (Silja Schandorff is the ballerina pictured on each page of the main site -- Chosen, I might add, not as a nominee for World's Greatest Dancer, but because when I put up the site I wanted a ballerina that wasn't identified with any American company, so that no one would mistake the site for an ABT, SFB, NYCB site, etc. But she is an outstanding dancer, IMO.)

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Schandorff has been dancing, although a bit infrequently. One of her problems is that she needs a tall and strong partner, so she sometimes find herself cancelled, not because of injuries to herself but to the one or two partners who are tall enough for her.

The award was very much founded on her performance in la Sylphide with Hubbe last year. I think it is the same in the States as elsewhere. Merit is not reviewed on frequency, but on dancing the important performances. I once saw a book on Royal Ballet, where there was a list of how many performances each dancer has done, and the situation was that allthough Fonteyn and Sibley were on all the pictures, it was Merle Park who have done much of the dancing. I then tried to count the situation for RDB but got depressed viewing Johnny Eliasens high score, so I stopped counting and measured in quality and enjoyment.

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Putting aside my own marked personal prejudice against tall dancers, to be fair I must say that Silja Schandorff has never got the exposure her excellent dancing would otherwise have deserved. To me, an excellent dancer is someone who has never stopped improving, and that is most definitely the case here. She has not wilted, but grown. As an eighteen-year old, she was so beautiful that panic would break out in the house as soon as she stepped out on stage. She could have relied upon her lovely face, but rather chose to work. As a tall, strongly-built woman, with a solid technique, she nevertheless eschwed the athletic and sensationalist, and took a more difficult path. She has become a sensitive and very touching dancer, one who can even convince in Bournonville, a thing I never would have said ten years ago. Her intelligence is keen, and her musicality quite exceptional - she can "dialogue" with the conductor, playing with the music without ever distorting it, riding gracefully on its wave. At Paris three or four years ago, in front of a cool, even hostile audience, Miss Schandorff, equally cool in her determination, was the only dancer, apart from Thomas Lund, who brought the house down with her variation in "Napoli".

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I think you are right Silja Schandorff is not so well known internationally as she should be considering her talents. Having seen her from childhood and enjoyed her growth as a dancer the big momement for me was two seasons ago when she in one week danced a wonderfull La Sylphide, Giselle and Thaikowsky Pas De Deux, three parts that are not designed for her type of dancer, but she proved herself the true ballerina by making these part her own. i then knew that she could make a great impact in whatever she was handed if she wanted to. Another great moment was then Tivoli Gala where she and Hübbe danced Duo Consertante- an evening where all possible European talent danced all the standand Russian virtouso parts. silja's greatness is her combination of style, tecnique and allure. You can find dancers who are tecnically as strong or even stronger than her, but she has such a grip on the audience that you must look at her and nobody else. At Swan Lake seeing another good dancer, I find myself noting elements in the decor - I never do that when Silja Schandorff is dancing.

Problem in Copenhagen this year have been lack of repetoire and the situation, that allthough favored by the audience and reviewers, management has favoured the less talented and much less alluring but constant Caroline Cavallo.

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The fascination with Cavallo fascinates me, as I've never seen anything interesting in her. Yet every director save, I believe, Peter Schaufuss since Frank Andersen (and now, of course, again Frank Andersen) seems to see her as a ballerina. While Schandorff and Rose Gad (a ballerina close to Schandorff in age, and also exquisitely musical) have disappeared at times from the roster, or been given secondary roles (taken off Hilda, in Folk Tale, for example), Cavallo dances leading roles in everything. (I love your phrase "the constant Caroline Cavallo." She did nearly every leading role in the Bournonville Week in 2000 and made absolutely no impact.) She's the ideal 21st century dancer. A good enough technique, and so can "do all the steps," if nothing else, and looks the same in absolutely everything she does.

I thought the critics -- at least one of the most important ones, Effy -- also favored Cavallo. Something about her lovely smile.

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