Anne

I just found it in a much better quality: Final Curtain by Alexander Kølpin

For those who can understand some Danish there is an interview with Nikolaj Hübbe (among others) on Danish television about the qualities you need as a manager in an artistic institution, which can be watched on this link: Hübbe on Danish television

I just re-read your interview, Jane, and I can see that I haven't read it accurately enough - I'm sorry about that! Your own statement sort of glides into the direct quote and that was what led me "astray". About the Danish press expecting a new and inventive approach to the classics I'm not so sure that is still the case. Hübbe's staging of Giselle a couple of years ago was highly praised even though it was a completely traditional staging, and the same was the case with his Sylphide 7 years ago, where I only read some sour comments from a Swedish critic about it being too traditional and bringing nothing new. I think Hübbe would have got away with a traditional Napoli as well, as long as he had been able to breath life into the characters and the drama.

Sorry about being so late in answering! I have browsed through interviews, articles and reviews on the subject in the Danish papers to see, if I could find something upon which I might have built my impression, but I could only find Hübbe's own vague references to people from abroad being "very protective of Bournonville - possessive, almost", to quote from Jane Simpsons latest interview. I'm sorry I haven't been able to find anything more substantial - maybe I shouldn't have been so quick in bringing on a statement like that. That happens when you write from memory!

I have seen her live with the Royal Ballet on two occasions. Well, then you can't be helped, I'm afraid . Did you ever see Jette Buchwald as Madge? She is a rather masculine witch with some of the wooden quality you also saw in Niels Bjørn Larsen (whom I have only seen on pictures, never live). Lis Jeppesen, the former sylph, also does Madge on stage nowadays, but she is maybe a too feminine and too fragile witch for my taste.

Go and have a look at the video with Sorella Englund and Nikolaj Hübbe in La Sylphide, and I think you will be won over at the spot!

A belated comment to this interview which I'm sorry I didn’t come across until a few days ago: It’s a really interesting interview with all the right questions asked – thank you for that, Jane! Hübbe has some very good points about establishing a repertoire, and I think he has an acute awareness of the problems lurking in every corner of the existence of a big balletcompany nowadays, with both a strong tradition, a dwindling and ageing audience and a big corps hungry for challenges to cope with. When he made his new and updated version of Napoli I think he had hoped for a younger audience to show up, but as far as I could see the audience looked exactly the same as they did to any traditional Bournonville performance. It just isn't easy to get hold of new audiences! I was a bit sorry, though, when I read that he considers the Bournonville Festival extremely commercial. I understand if he is not fond of the idea of a festival returning rigidly every 13th year, because that kind of tradition can easily become a straitjacket. It’s much better if you make a festival when it is convenient or when you have a special occasion, like in 2005, where they celebrated the 200th birthday of Bournonville. I attended most of that festival and I must say I didn’t think for one moment that it was too commercial. There is a big difference between commercialism and good marketing, and I think the latter was the case in 2005. What was presented on the stage was high quality and presented with high spirit, and Copenhagen was simply brimming with interesting activities and exhibitions related to Bournonville and his time, all on a higly professional level. Good marketing is necessary today, but as long as you don’t compromise with quality there is nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t quite understand Nikolaj Hübbe’s reserve as he himself has shown no special reluctance in this area, taking part in a lot of highly commercial activities when he had just started as ballet master in Copenhagen. But I thought it was OK because you sometimes really need to do odd things to get the media’s attention. In New York he must have met with much more commercialism in the art’s world, and therefore I really don’t understand his attitude towards that aspect of the Bournonville Festivals. Hübbe thinks the Bournonville Festivals will cement the impression that the RDB can only dance Bournonville. I don’t think, things work that simple. Many companies have to struggle to establish their own identity because they have a very short history. and the RDB got one as a birth present, which can of course at times be a burden too, I'm fully aware of that- But no other country can legitimately present a Bournonville Festival, that’s a Danish privilege. Like Wagner in Germany and Shakespeare in England. You always have to fight against just being a custodian, but that’s a challenge that one must face. And being ”the owner” of the tradition can surprisingly enough give some liberty, though one should have thought opposite: When Hübbe made his new version of Napoli. the attitude of the Danish press and the Danish audience were generally open and interested, the resistance came much more adamant from abroad!

It's good to know that it all ended well and with a laugh - it would have been terrible if something bad had happened to her. She has had injuries enough in her life, I think!

Knowing that makes the performance of Lendorf even more impressive! Thank you for taht information, annamicro. I too think that Kish made a really good performance on the 30th, it was a true pleasure to watch him and I like the elegance and style of his dancing. I think he has real class. I just wonder what it is that makes him so different from the rest of the company. Maybe he is too stylish, I don't know. In the prologue the worksmen bumped into Cojocaru with their barrel organ quite heavily, and it looked as if it hurt her and she left the scene immediately after that. I wondered if it was part of the story or if was an accident. Can you, annamicro, or anyone who has seen some of the other performances tell?

Alban Lendorf replaced the announced Christopher Rickert as Puck, and I think this was his first performance (March 30) in the role. According to the homepage of the RDB he is going to do it a couple of times more during April, and good so, for he is indeed terrific! He has the physical powers and the flexibiblity to do all the acrobatics needed for this part, bouncing and rolling about like he was a ball and not a body with legs, arms and a head on the top, and he visibly enjoys doing it, which goes very good with the anarchic (and to some extent a bit tiresome) character of Puck. On top of it comes his open and charmingly innocent face which makes this little nasty creature quite endearing, and I think he deliberately uses this contrast to a comic effect. The part of Puck is a real tour de force, and one is amazed that the dancer is able to go on dancing in the last scene of the ballet, where he is back in his double role as Philostrat. Another pleasant surprise was Gregory Dean as Lysander. I have until now only seen him in abstract ballets where he has always caught my eye as a quite elegant dancer, and I was happy to see that he can act too. His Lysander was very boyish with a youthful eagerness in both his earnest love for Hermia and his more savage desire for Helena. And I like his ample way of moving which is light and grounded at the same time. His Hermia was Amy Watson, and they suited each other perfectly, both in character and way of dancing. Their pas de deux in the 1st act was one of the highlights of the evening. The sensation of the evening was of course Alina Cojocaru, who danced for the last time that night. She is really petite but she is able to strech her lines and bend her body in such beautiful arabesques that she never looks short, even with a tall partner like Nehemiah Kish. And she was equally convincing as a girlish and uncertain Hippolyta in the prologue, as an icy Titania of the 1st act and as a mature woman and duchess in the 2nd act. Especially the scene, where Theseus wakes her up in the morning and she is still a bit bewildert after her dream until the love breaks through in an extremely beautiful pas de deux, was very moving. That is Neumeier when he is best! He really can tell what is going on inside a human being by the way he or she moves and dances. Cojocaru fitted in perfectly with the company which is not quite the case with Nehemiah Kish who is a really brilliant and beautiful dancer but who keeps look like a stranger. It was a night with a lot of beautiful dancing and everybody doing well in their parts. My reservations are merely about the ballet itself. I saw it long ago in the eighties in Hamburg while still a very young girl, and I remember being in total awe, and therefore I was looking very much forward to seeing it again. But I must admit that I was rather disappointed. To me the different elements of the ballet never really integrate, the elves and their music (Ligeti) stay strangely remote from the rest, represented by the warm realms of Mendelssohn’s music, throughout the ballet. Of course the human beings never become aware of the elves but they are certainly under their influence, and therefore it would make sense if the two worlds would contaminate with each other to some degree. The only time that happens is right at the end, where Oberon wakes up Titania and they finally show their love for each other. They do that to Mendelssohn’s music - maybe they too learned something this summer night. I had some difficulties with the elves, too. To me they look more like pale sea anemones, or like marsians, being very mechanical in their way of moving, making a lot of noise with the pointe shoes, sometimes as an intentional effect, but most of the time not, which is very disturbing when the music is so non-human and silence-like. I know this is a problem in most white acts, but somehow it disturbs me less in the old ballets, maybe because you can’t think the choerography away from these shoes. Furthermore I think the elf-scenes are much too long, time dragging terribly while the dancers keep doing the same or similar (and mostly off-putting) steps over and over again. The trees on the stage are also too small for the elves to hide in. It has an unintentional comic effect when Oberon tries to hoist himself onto a branch of one of the trees, while observing the loving couples, and he almost fills out the whole tree. The group of workmen is another problem: they are just not funny enough! And I’m sure most of the audience doesn’t have the faintest idea of what is going on or what the play about Pyramus and Thisbe is all about. Even knowing Shakespeare’s play was not any great help. Consequently the workmen pulled very few laughs from the audience. Only Thomas Lund made the audience laugh heartily when he made his appearance on pointe shoes, but then they would have laughed anyway. Neumeier who is normally a brilliant storyteller completetly misses his goal here, or maybe something has gone missing during the many years where the ballet hasn’t been played. But apart from that the forrest-scene is the most succesful and original part of the ballet, and it contains some absolutely delightful and poetic choreography for the two young couples – and some really amusing situations too, with that touch of real pain and bewilderment which gives depths to the fun. The final wedding scene has some beautiful dancing in it too, but I think it is strange to have this kind of conventional dance-finale after all the modernities in the previous act. It’s like watching the end of Sleeping Beauty patched onto the ballet. But I admit it was beautiful to look at, though a bit thin. A last comment is for the orchestra: The Royal Orchestra played wonderfully under the direction of Graham Bond, but it was highly disturbing to see them walk in and out of the pit everytime Ligeti was on, or even leaving the pit few minutes before the end of the ballet as did the brass section (not counting the many times this group left while the rest of the orchestra played on). Everytime you could see the light from the room outside the pit when the door opened. Maybe they thought they were invisible because of the gauze that was covering the pit. Well, they were not!

Thank you for that information! That explains a lot. One never knows what dramas have taken place backstage before you take your seats in the auditorium. It seems that the company has a lot of injuries to cope with, and maybe that could be a part of the explanations, why some of the dancers are dearly missed on the cast lists. Mads Blangstrup has apparently been away for a long time due to injuries but is now back again. I still wonder why we haven't seen anything of Kristoffer Sakurai for more than a year. He was cast for James in one of the last performances of La Sylphide in February, but I'm not sure whether he did dance in the end. It's a great pity as he is an extraordinary beautiful and talented dancer.

Thanks for the review Anne. Has there been any discussion in the Danish press as to why some of the programs sold so poorly? There hasn't been any discussion that I am aware of. The problem is a general one for the Royal Theatre (including opera and drama), and I think it is a very complex one. But it is a pity, because they will have to cut down furthermore in the next season. Anne, thank you for your reports. Given the financial situation you describe, doesn't next season's 4-city U.S. tour seem like a bit risky? (Unless of course there is a big government or corporate subsidy.) Traveling over such enormous distances with a full company, all those sets and costumes, and (I presume) an orchestra must be hugely expensive. The company is a state company and as such heavily subsidied (they couldn't exist without), and I suppose the Danish government is paying for tours like that as a kind of Danish culture campaign (they probably try and sell some Danish bacon at the same time!).

I haven't yet, but I have tickets for a performance later in March - can't wait!! I'm so happy that Cojocaru is going to dance Titania/Hippolyta on that evening, she's a great favorite of mine.

Thank you for the link to your review! I did read it when you posted it a week ago but decidedly didn't re-read it before doing my own report, because it was so close to my own experience that it would be difficult to write independently if it was too vivid in remembrance. Thank you, by the way, for two excellent reviews in the last numbers of DanceView!

Thanks for the review Anne. Has there been any discussion in the Danish press as to why some of the programs sold so poorly? There hasn't been any discussion that I am aware of. The problem is a general one for the Royal Theatre (including opera and drama), and I think it is a very complex one. But it is a pity, because they will have to cut down furthermore in the next season. The ballet gets very little press at the moment. The repertoire for the next season was launched a couple of weeks ago, and only one of the national papers (Berlingske Tidende) bothered to cover it. It is really sad!

First I’d like to congratulate Nikolaj Hübbe on his general planning of the running season: Within the limits of a very narrow budget he has made a really fine repertoire: Bringing one completely new programme with Jerome Robbins Dances at a Gathering and West Side Story Suite (both have never been on the repertory of the RDB before) and one completely new staging of Bournonvilles Napoli, he has cleverly put the rest of the programmes together by mixing old and new pieces side by side in a very refreshing way or by repremiering former successes, such as Giselle and John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It should have appealed to a large audience, but the sale has apparently been quite low until now, which I can’t understand, financial crisis or not. I missed the Robbins programme, which I would have loved to see, but until now I had the chance to see three programmes of the RDB this season: Napoli, Giselle and , most recently, Bournonville & Balanchine, consisting of Bournonoville’s La Sylphide and Balanchine’s Symphony in C. Napoli There has already been a lot of talk, also on this site, about Nikolaj Hübbe and Sorella Englund’s staging of Bournonville’s Napoli, where they have transferred the story to the nineteenfifties. It got a very warm welcome in most Danish newspapers, the attitude somehow being ”let’s give Hübbe a fair chance and bring an open mind to it”. Especially the 2nd act was highly praised as a refreshing renewal of the ballet’s weakest point: New music and new choreography in stead of trying to reconstruct and rearrange what is left of this ill-treated act. I liked it too, especially the gorgeous stagedecor,the light effects and the floating costumes. The music by the young Louise Alenius Boserup was smooth and more traditional than I would have expected from this cross-over composer. In my opinion she should have used her hallmark, namely her strange, otherworldly voice, much more. She does so in the beginning of the act, where her whispering, computermanipulated voice emanates from the orchestral pit like underwater airbubbles puffing towards the surface, and I thought at once, vouw, this is going to be great! Regrettably, soon after the music changes to a sort of modern mainstream romanticism, which suits the staging and Hübbe’s only modestly modern choreography well, but it would as well had it been for a film production of the Lord of the Rings. The music is professionally done and it is far from bad or embarrassing, but I’m afraid it has not the caliber that will help this new version of Napoli survive into the future. The 1st act was in general well received too. It felt very much alive, the dancers visibly enjoying being there, wearing new clothes and trying out new gags and tricks. In his staging of this act, Hübbe has been very faithful to the original choreography, not only the steps, also the placing on the stage are almost the same: how the dancers are grouped, how they move across the stage etc., and thus acknowledging that Bournonville was not only a great master in creating steps but also a genius when it came to populating a stage and arranging a crowd in telling tableaux. The costumes were fine and I was surprised how easily I could accept the contrast between choreography of the 19th century and costumes of the 20th century. Only the shorts and the sleeveless white shirts (looking like ordinary undershirts) of Gennaro and the other fisherboys looked extremely unflattering – on anybody! No one, however, has spoken well about the 3rd act, which is a confusing mixture of the modern style of the 1st act and the traditional version. It is a difficult task, because the dancing in this act is so all important, and the dancing is so very close related to the traditional costumes. I think Hübbe and Englund should have been brave and have changed the costumes for that act as well. The skirts of the fifties are much the same shape as the traditional Bournonville skirts: narrow waist and wide, kneelong skirts. That could have been great fun! The question is, whether you should do a modernisation like this, if you don’t have an idea that covers up the whole piece. If you can’t make the third act fit into the plan, the idea is simply not good enough. Jane Simpson has pointed out that this version of Napoli is like watching 3 different and independent ballets – a kind of triple bill –, and I think this is very precise. The ballet will be on the repertory next season too, and that gives Hübbe/Englund time to work it over once more. It is worth the effort, because much of this version works really well. Giselle The production of Giselle was a repremiere from last season and it was sent on tour in the provinces in January this year where I saw two of the performances. Two different casts were sent on tour, but as the RDB doesn’t make the cast lists public until few days before a performance I didn’t have any influence on that aspect and thus happened to see the same cast twice! But apart from that it was a great experience! It is a traditional staging but not at all stuffy. Only one thing annoyed me: I don’t understand why Giselle is buried in the woods, with no cross on the grave. In this version Giselle doesn’t commit suicide like in the original french version but dies from a weak/broken heart, and therefore she should be buried in christened earth. Maybe it is a tradition no one questions anymore, but it is illogical. The willis of the 2nd act was the most disciplined lot I have seen for a very long time. Perfectly synchronized and radiating the right icy beauty. Gudrun Bojesen was Giselle, charming and heartrendering in the first act, unearthly and tragic in the second. She is at the moment the brightest shining star in the company. It is not only her strong technique, but her ability to make every step look beautiful and extraordinary. It always looks like she has oceans of time, even when it is allegro, every movement is in place and finely chiseled, but always looking natural, and with a perfect phrasing so that the dancing gets light and shadow. Her acting in the 1st act was fine, though I have seen more heartbreaking performances, but in the 2nd act she was nothing less than sublime. At the same time remote and present in her sorrow. Marcin Kupinski was her Albrecht. He has recently been promoted to soloist and is, along with Ulrik Birkkjær, newly appointed principal, being heavily exposed in all the leading roles of the repertory. Kupinski was no even match for Gudrun Bojesen, neither technically or dramatically. He has a very limited range of expressions, but he has a sympathetic way of being on stage, and a clean and light dancing style with lots of air in his jumps. Femke Mølbach was unfortunately replaced by Kizzy Matiakis as Myrtha. Matiakis is an efficient dancer with a strong technique, but somehow her dancing never comes truly alive, she is always looking strangely controlled and tight, her lines never long and smooth. I hope she will be able to loosen up some day because she looks like a really hardworking dancer. Charles Andersen and Lena Maria Gruber rendered the most endearing solos as Giselle’s friends in the big divertissenment in the 1st act. Pure delicacy and charm. Certainly two young dancers to watch out for! Bournonville & Balanchine On February 24 I saw the last performance of the mixed programme with Bournonoville’s La Sylphide and Balanchine’s Symphony in C, and I must admit that it was a mixed experience. Again I hadn’t chosen the cast myself, even on the day of the performance one couldn’t read anywhere who was going to dance. Like in Napoli it was Ulrik Birkkjær who had the lead, dancing James in La Sylphide, and Susanne Grinder was his Sylph. Grinder had her debut in this part earlier this year. She is a very promising dancer with an intelligent and charming approach to the role, but still not able to fill the stage with her presence or fill the role for that sake, but who does so in the beginning? I think she has potential and will grow if she gets the time. Her dancing is very pleasant and light, with much refinement, and you believed her grief in the end of the ballet. Ulrik Birkkjær, on the other hand, is more of a problem, especially now where he gets all the best parts in the repertory where acting is implied (Gennaro, Albrecht, James, Romeo etc.). I really think he is overexposed at the time being, and that is a pity, both for him and for us, the audience. As Gennaro he could pass as an ordinary young man and you could live with this ”ordinariness” because so much else is going on in this ballet, but La Sylphide doesn’t have this diversity and it draws it’s life from the main characters. His face is telling very little, though he tries hard, but it is both too much and too little, his mime reminding me of an early silent movie with wide open eyes, and lots of black around the eyes (couldn’t someone help him with his make-up?). Two young and a bit pale characters in the same performance is perhaps too much to make an interesting Sylphide. I was lucky, though, and saw the guestdancer Merrill Ashley as Madge, who had an impressive ability to tune into the world of this ballet. She was much in line with the Madge of Sorella Englund, rather than the more traditional witch of Jette Buchwald. Symphony in C , which is merely a show of brilliance, was only partly brilliant. To the brilliant end belongs Amy Watson’s solo in the 1st movement, partnered nicely but unimpressively by Gregory Dean, and Diana Cuni and Alban Lendorf as the solocouple in the 3rd movement. Alban Lendorf is the most promising male dancer in the moment, with an interesting and open face communicating with the audience and breathtaking airy jumps. You cannot take your eyes from him as soon as he enters the stage. In the 2nd movement Alexandra Lo Sardo, a newcomer to the company, was the solo lady. She is a very secure dancer and masters the adagio perfectly, maybe owing some of her succes to the excellent partnering by Jean-Lucien Massot, who’s hands are always in place and never in the way. But she is a totally wrong type for this part, being very short and with no ”ballerina-grandeur”. And then she looked extremely sulky all the time. Maybe it was just her concentration showing on her face, but it was highly distracting. Lena Maria Gruber, who did a most charming figure in the divertissements in the 1st act of Giselle, had the solo of the 4th movement, and she did it efficiently but without the indefinable ”more” which is needed in the solos of this ballet. What surprised me most was the lack of homogeneity in the corps and in the secundary solocouples. It surprised me because they had only weeks before done such a fine job in Giselle. In the 1st movement british Kizzy Matiakis was cast opposite american Holly Jean Dorger, and seeing them together was like watching the crash of two different planets: the first pure disciplin and clean lines, the other an exuberant bunch of fluttering arms and hands, swaying hips and great smiles. Something in the middle would have been fine! This was the worst example of individual styles put toghether, but there were many such ”diversities” in the corps in general on this evening. New casting politics? There has lately been a lot of writing in the newspapers about Nikolaj Hübbe’s casting strategies, and it hasn’t been in his favour! One has got the clear feeling that the honeymoon is over and that he has stretched the patience of even his most fervent admirers (myself included) too far. I guess, that we simply miss some of the ”older” soloist and principals deeply: Thomas Lund, Tina Højlund, Diana Cuni, Andrew Bowman, Gudrun Bojesen, Morten Eggert etc. which we have come to love in the wake of the great generation of dancers of which Hübbe himself is a part (Silja Schandorff, Rose Gad, Kenneth Greve, Caroline Cavallo etc.) and who have now retired. I fear they risk to be a lost generation. They are mature artists now in their thirties and we know that they have only few years left on the top, and we are sorry to miss out on these golden years of a dancers life, where technique, stage presence and acting abilities are peaking in a kind of synergie. Instead we see all the new ones all the time, and artists like Thomas Lund and Morten Eggert are waisted in the often small character roles, whereas we longto see them DANCE! It is important to let the new and young dancers try their luck on the stage, but it is a problem when it takes over to this extent. Further more it looks like priority is given solely to dancing abilities and none to acting abilities, and that is fatal in a company like the RDB, where one of the absolute strengths has always been the fine mime and the dramatic quality, and where a large part of the repertoire is based on the story ballets. Ulrik Birkkjær, Nehemiah Kish and Marcin Kupinski might all be excellent dancers but they are a bit blank when it comes to acting and yet they dominate the entire repertoire. I miss some stage personalities, especially among the men! Alexander Stæger and Alban Lendorf among the young come to mind in that connection – let them get some more stage light, please!

I just read Kistrup's review and I found it highly interesting to learn about all the possible principles lying behind a casting - hierarchical casting versus type casting so to speak. I could aggree with most of her opinions regarding the dancers but was surprised that the two dancers I fell most in love with that night, Yao Wei and Jean-Lucien Massot, were criticized the most. In both cases it was about the style, Wei being too romantic and Massot just not in style. That he should also be technically shortcoming I have difficulties to see, but maybe I can see what she meant by lack of style: To my eyes Massot certainly has a lot of style, but it's always very Massot'ish, powerful, strong and elegant, a very masculine style. It might be that I just haven't got the eye for the right Balanchine style yet. Wei apparently put too much lyricism into her dancing, though not to my taste. Maybe I've got the Danish "sweet tooth" or hunger for the steps to tell a story. I have seen the NYCB a couple of times, and everytime I feel a bit chilled by their performances. I love Balanchine much more when danced by the Danes - or by the POB for that sake. Maybe one should allow for some national or personal colouring. It shows the strength of the choreography that it can be interpretated in many ways, like a musical score. The historically correct interpretation might be very interesting but is not always artistically the best.

I saw the second last performance of this programme on March 30. I was very happy with it, except for some disappointments regarding the casting. On the homepage Silja Schandorff had been announced as the sleepwalker as well as a soloist in Symphony in C, and I had been thrilled by thought of getting one last glimpse of her before she retires next week. Kristoffer Sakurai should have been the poet. Instead Christina Michanek danced the Sleepwalker, and her poet was Marcin Kupinski. Sakurai seems to have vanished from the casting lists, not only in this programme but for most of the season, at least to my knowledge. I wonder why. Does anyone know? But apart from that I liked the performances of all three ballets very much. Both Symphony in Three movements and Sonnambula were new to me, and I had looked especially forward to seing Sonnambula because it is such a strange bird in the Balanchine repertory. But I must admit that I think the ballet is a bit silly! There are some choreographically interesting things in it, I was f.x. thrilled by the way the Sleepwalker moves around like in a trance - very well performed by Christina Michanek, who has the right unworldlyness in her way of dancing, like she is floating on air or being pulled forward by an imaginary force, her mind being both here and not here at the same time. Marcin Kupinski was a bit blank as the poet, not an easy task for a young dancer. But as a whole I think the ballet is a series of dramatic clichés. I was much more enthusiastic about Symphony in Three Movements. The company rendered it with so much energy and fervour that one was simply delivered from the start. Then it doesn't matter so much, that the lines and the synchronization were not always perfect, mostly they were. Many of the reviews mentioned this as a great problem, but I don’t think it was that bad anymore. Yao Wei and Sebastian Kloborg danced the big pas de deux of the slow movement, and I have seldom seen anything so beautiful! It was sheer poetry the way they could move their arms around each other’s bodies like waves or ripples in the water, each arm looking like an extension of the other’s. It was breathtakingly beautiful and it felt like time stood still! Symphony in C on the other hand was a performance very much in control of all the details, with a sparkling corpse and many good soloists. What I missed was some more character in the big solo parts. Amy Watson was soloist in the first movement together with Jean-Lucien Massot. I don’t know exactly why I’m not so enthusiastic about Amy Watson, because she’s lovely to look at and I can’t say she’s not up to it technically. Maybe she’s just not the right type for Balanchine, being of too much sweetness and roundness in both looks, body stature and way of moving. Her partner Massot on the other hand was a marvel! When he entered the stage you could suddenly see what a mature artist can offer and what had somehow been lacking the whole night: personality, focus and precisison. He moves with the confidence of a panther, sure that every jump and turn will land in the right place and at the right time. His 2 solos were worth the whole evening! I don't want to be unfair to the other dancers, because many of them did a really good job, but the cast that night consisted very much of corps dancers and the stars-to-be, with only 4 principals present during the whole programme. It’s very interesting to see the new and the young dancers, but a cast with only young dancers can be –and was - a bit anonymous. There was, of course, many exceptions from that, and one very significant one was Alban Lendorf, 20 years old, trained at the school of the RDB and member of the corps since last autumn. He danced the Harlequin in Sonnambula and was also soloist together with Diana Cuni in the 3rd movement of Symphony in C. He’s an eyecatcher from the very moment he enters the stage, with a very smooth technique and ample jumps. His only problem might be that he’s very short and a bit chunkily build, which could limit his range of roles and partners. Gudrun Bojesen and Gregory Dean did the solo of the 2nd movement instead of the announced Silja Schandorff and Nehemia Kish. I had been looking so much forward to seing Kish, who is the latest arrival among the principals, coming from the National Ballet of Canada. well, I hope for better luck next time! Bojesen of course had all the starquality needed for that part. She’s a very versatile dancer, and I hope that our new ballet master, Nikolaj Hübbe, will give her more place in the programmes and promote her more than has been the case during this last season. Maybe there will be more room for her when Schandorff and Rose Gad retire by the end of this season, ripping the company of two of it’s greatest ballerinas in recent time, though Rose Gad hasn't been very active lately.

I was sad to read in the newspaper that Flemming Flindt has died, only 72 years old. He has been a really important figure in Danish ballet history, both as a dancer, a choreographer and as balletmaster with the RDB. My condolences go to the family. I met him once, on a very special occasion. His ballet "The Lesson" had been canonized as important cultural heritage by the Danish ministry of culture a couple of years ago, sharing the honour with 2 other Danish ballets, Bournonville's "La Sylphide" and Harald Lander's "Etudes". "The Lesson" was performed in the new operahouse of Copenhagen together with other works of art (operas, songs, theatrical pieces, you name it), that had been likewise canonized, and the evening's programme was broadcasted live on national television, and in the front seats sat people from government and royalty adn other VIPs. I happened to sit right behind Flemming Flindt, and I couldn't resist the impulse to contact him during the interval and congratulate him on the great honour and tell him that I thought he and his ballet highly deserved the honour. He was very modest about it and seemed to appreciate the praise. Maybe he could see, that the praise came from the heart, as I really think he has created a masterpiece with this shocking one-acter. He has made many ballets since, some of them good and/or interesting, but he never surpassed the originality of this first opus. And one thing he was really good at, right form the beginning: he could choose the right music, and he didn't just use existing music, he often collaborated with contemporary composers and asked them to create new music for his ballets, just like Harald Lander and Bournonville did. Therefore we owe him thanks for all that exellent music he has comissioned, and because his ballets were always very entertaining, mostly in the good meaning of the word, and had a big audience, he has made contemporary classical music accessible to many people.

That was difficult!! After much considerations I chose to travel about 20 years back in time to see the Royal Danish Ballet perform Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet with a very young Nikolaj Hübbe as Romeo and Heidi Ryom as his Juliet. Together they made the most touching performance of that ballet I've ever seen. As Mercutio I would very much like to see Alexander Kölpin. Well, if you really mean, one can only chose one, that would be the one!

Maybe I wasn't hallucinating that day in Paris then (but it doesn't diminish the regret!!). I just browsed through the thread you mentioned, it was really interesting. Thanks for tip!

Thanks for the list! It's reassuring to know that the material exists and it leaves one with a hope for a future release. Talking about hallucinations: I would have sworn that I stood with a dvd with a portrait of Edward Villella in the hand this summer in a music store somewhere in Paris. I left it there, thinking it was a bit too expensive, but of course I regretted it when I came home. Now I have been looking for it everywhere on the internet, but it seems to be non-existent. Is it something I have dreamt or does anybody know about a dvd of that sort on the market?

Well, I don't know much about modern dance, I'm afraid, so it's difficult for me to fill in on that subject in a qualified way. But you write more generally about the Danes' lack of understanding of dance as an artform: .I agree on most of that, sadly enough, but I know there is an initiative called "Dans i skolen" (Dance in the school) which works succesfully for integrating dance in the schooleducation of children. You can read about it on Dansens hus It started back in 2001, I think, and their ideas have been implemented in some schools already. That makes some hope for the future. Let's talk about that one day!

The music is arranged by John Lanchberry, an English conductor and composer, who has made a lot of musical arrangements for ballets, using existing music. You can read more about him here: Lanchberry He's very clever at it but it's true there's often not much likeness with the original left. The same can be said about Leighthon Lukas' adaption of Massenet's music for MacMillans ballet Manon. I love it but it's not Massenet anymore! Last time it was revived was in the Spring season 2007 - read more here: Mayerling

I see your point - it's more the intensions of the Royal Ballet that annoys you than the real outcome, because in so far only ONE dvd has actually come out with Kobborg. I wonder if he is often ill ot injured since he has been replaced twice on an important dvd production.