Anne

I went, and I was happy I did! My expectations were rather low because I hadn't been too happy with the photographs I'd seen. I'm still not in love with the costumes in act 1. Giselle's dress looks more like the costume of a water nymph from 2nd act of "Napoli", and the attire of the aristocratic ladies makes them look like enormous, colourful beetles dressed up for a horse ride with their funny looking jockey caps. 

But apart from all that the overall aesthetic impression is very beautiful, though maybe a little too much on the gloomy side in the first half of act 1 where the music is still optimistic, simple and happy. But this sinister, artificial  and slightly claustrophobic scenery harmonizes well with what happens later when everything, literally, falls apart and reveals a barren landscape: a world somewhere between cityscape and landscape, between indoor and outdoor. The willies are not far away in the forest - they are much closer, right behind you, maybe even in your own back yard: the black doors in the backdrop gauze are not doors through which you can escape, no, they are doors through which the willies enter your world, and from them there is no escape - except through forgiving and eternal love, as represented by Giselle. The barren landscape behind the stage is changing all the time, and I would love to see it again to be able to find out exactly why it changes at certain times. At one point what in the beginning looks like a battlefield from WW1 with naked trees on a blurred background suddenly lights up and reveals a breathtakingly beautiful mountain landscape bathed in a red-golden light. I cannot remember what exactly happened in this rather short moment where the claustrophobic room opened up to a wide, beautiful but still bleak mountain world. Maybe somebody can help?

The willies of this production are the most scary ones I have experienced, and not because the look revengeful, many of them did, but more because they looked so completely frozen with grief. This was clearly visible in the expressive eyes of Kizzi Mattiakis' Myrtha. When I saw her in the former production of Giselle she was more the icy bitch, but her Myrtha here simply cannot do anything else than what she does: Torture and kill men, maybe to relieve herself from the pain that doesn't give her a moment's rest and kills any other feeling in her.

Ida Praetorius was a very young Giselle, still a girl prone to giggles but in any other aspect an endearing creature with a healthy appetite for life. She is a wonderful dancer who moves with a charming ease and lightness and who has a refreshing artlessness to her manners. I'm sure she has  potential to develop even further, and comes time she hopefully gets the boldness to play more with the steps, daring to either drag or fasten the phrases, to postpone the ending of a movement or a balance till the very last moment - all these things that give the dance light and shadow. I think she has it in her, this deep musicality, which allows for irregularities without being tasteless. Around her evolve other talented dancers: Sebastian Haynes as a very sympathetic Hilarion, who is very much like herself, and therefore stands no chance when Andreas Kaas' Albrecht turns up with his cunning manners and expert courtship. This Albrecht is not a villain but he knows what he does and has just not thought very much about the consequences. His grief and his remorse is true and one hopes for him that his nightly experience with the willies and the enduring and rescuing love of Giselle will give him the freedom to choose his own life - and hopefully another wife than Femke Mølbach's calculating and blasée Bathilde. Both Haynes and Kaas have an enormous capacity for bouncing and floating on the air, which is asked for in the 2nd act. They are lovely dancers, and so is Jonathan Chmelensky who partnered the equally delightful Caroline Baldwin in the peasant pas de deux in act 1. 

After the transmission I had hoped for a cast list but it ran over the screen so quickly that no one had a chance to read it: It is an insult to the dancers! I would very much like to know who danced the two solo willies. One of them was particularly good. Can anybody help?

Yes, you are right - we are a bit off topic now. But thanks anyway for updating me on the pop-up by Rees! It sounds interesting.

7 hours ago, KNA said:

Being a part of 'the new' audience who haven't been quite so attuned to the traditional Danish style probably means that I'm not completely in the category of 'Danes' you describe. I want more than good story telling! I'm in love with the more experimental setups and with dancers like Holly Dorger and J'aime Crandall who take my breath away with speed and pyrotechnics. Going by audience's response to for example J'aime Crandall's Kitri earlier this year, I'd say I'm not alone, either. This doesn't mean that I don't like traditions, I wish we could focus on both aspects, I guess. I can definitely appreciate the points you made, though, it might just be the way of things! 

I think we agree totally on the point of view that both aspects deserve to be equally in focus. But I don't think it has necessarily anything to do with one's sympathies regarding traditional or experimental approach to the classics, as even a very modernized version has to be dramatically convincing.
You mention Crandall's and Dorger's Kitri as an example where pyrotechnics were highly appreciated by the audience, and I believe you. In this case, however, bravura is the very raison d'être of the ballet, as the story in itself is so silly that you can only accept it if the steps are brillianly executed. Yet, wouldn't it be an even worse shortcoming, if the dancers performed the steps technically perfectly but without charm or spirits? Wouldn't that degrade it to something even closer to a not-art experience than it already is? (Please don't misunderstand me, I'm no puritan: I do enjoy a well performed Don Quixote immensely!)

7 hours ago, KNA said:

Did you ever see Samuel Rees' pop-up? It was apropos this discussion, I think. 

No, I'm afraid I didn't. I haven't seen any of the pop-ups by Corpus. It seems I have missed out on something important. I looked it up on the theatre's homepage, where it said something about playing with rules and conventions and discussing what actually makes out the art form dance.

In the Danish online magazine POV (Point of View Internationally) they have posted an interesting and very detailed review of Hübbe and Schandorff's staging of Giselle by Alexander Meinertz (unfortunately in Danish) :

http://pov.international/den-sidste-romantiker/

On 4/11/2016 at 6:50 AM, KNA said:

It's a mystery to me, why with so many previous ballets, both technique and acting seemed important to Danish reviewers where as with Giselle, all they really seem to notice in terms of the actual dancing is the corps whenever anyone's out of sync. 

You are right about this, KNA, and, I think, not just regarding Giselle. Danish reviews suffer in general from a lack of comment on the quality of the dancing, except on what is easy for the eye to see, namely whether the corps is in sync or not, like you said.

There are probably more reasons for that, one being that the readership is not interested in or even able to  understand a description of the dance. We are all much more expert in appreciating acting, and our vocabulary around acting is far more ready. This might also apply on the reviewer himself: It actually takes quite an expert to appreciate dancing AND to be able to put it into words. To get beyond vague appraisals like "beautiful" or "impressive" is where the true challenge lies. 
Other reasons lie, of course, in the very limited space left to art reviews nowadays. The main focus, therefore, will be on the staging and the direction (and with the many different casts, all with a very limited number of performances, it might also appear a bit futile to focus a lot on any particular dancer...). 
There is a last and maybe very Danish reason for focusing so much on the acting: RDB has a long and strong tradition for story-telling ballets, where mime and acting play a major role. The heritage of Bournonville has heavily influenced the choice of repertoire and the taste of the audience: The Danes love story ballets, and in a story ballet good acting is crucial. In this kind of repertoire it is indeed possible to become a beloved dancer without being a brilliant technician, whereas the opposite is, I dare to say, nearly impossible. If you can't move the heart of the audience (or make people laugh), a dancer shouldn't build on a career in the RDB. Erik Bruhn might be an exception - he was, however, for the very same reason, not popular with everybody, not until he became famous abroad, that is... (I haven't seen him live, though, so I might not be the right person to say so, but on film his acting looks a bit wooden, to me at least, who hasn't experienced his indisputable charisma on stage). Balanchine had an early encounter with the RDB where he found a sort of dancers, who could in many ways fulfil his technical demands of speed and swiftness. But he didn't like the overall impression. It was apparently too soft and too expressive, I suppose the dancers put too much "meaning" into the movements, and thus deprived the movements of their neutral quality, their "pure dance" quality.
 

The farewell night for Gudrun Bojesen was a bit untraditional. Instead of letting her perform one of her chore roles, the theatre had put together a mix of interviews, ballet excerpts and video clips. Nikolaj Hübbe was the conferencier of the evening. Probably this way of doing things was due to the facts that Bojesen has been on maternity leave from the theatre for a long time and that she is not – and has never been – cast in any of the running productions. To "warm up" one of the former productions just in her honour was apparently too costly and – I don't know – maybe also too big an effort on her side. These are just my guesses.

The programme opened with The Jockey Dance by Bournonville showcasing Gudrun together with her close colleague and fellow prinicpal dancer, Gitte Lindstrøm (who has recently retired). It is a high spirited bagatelle about two competing jockeys, and it was a charming idea to have it performed by two dancers, who have practically grown up together at the royal ballet school and who have, of course, always been competitors (but it certainly looked like friendship had survived the competitive nature of their relationship!). As dancers they have both been very versatile with a strong technique and blessed with a physical strength enabling them to be equally good in adagios as well as allegros. They have shared much of the repertoire, but it has always come out very different due to their artistic temperaments, which couldn’t differ more.

By the end of the Jockey Dance the unpleasant discovery had sunk in: No orchestra in the pit. The feeling of a low-budget-evening was unavoidable.

After The Jockey Dance followed an interview session led by Erik Aschengreen, who is an institution in the Danish ballet world and whose books cover the history of the company during the last 5 or 6 decades. Bojesen and three of her partners took place in a red sofa: Ulrik Birkkjær, Nikolaj Hübbe and her only long term partner: Thomas Lund. On a big screen, introduced by Aschengreen, we saw a series of video clips with highlights from Bojesen’s long and impressive career, showing the wide range of her talent: We saw excepts from Bournonville’s A Folk Tale, Lander’s Festpolonaise, Neumeier’s Lady of the Camellias, Jiří Kylián’s Silk and Knife, Balanchine’s Dances at a Gathering, Flindt’s The Lesson and finally Nikiya's solo in La Bayadère. Between the clips the dancers were asked questions about their relationship with Bojesen, and Bojesen herself were asked about different aspects of her life as a dancer. This part of the programme was rounded off with a clip from Ulrik Wivel’s short film ”Jeg Dig Elsker” ("I You Love" – my translation), showing Hübbe directing Bojesen and Mads Blangstrup in one of the central mime scenes of La Sylphide.

As this long sequence was over we finally had some live dance again, though not immediately: On the screen we saw Blangstrup and Bojesen in the pas de deux from “The Flowerfest of Genzano” in a take from the Bournonville Festival in 2005. Midway through the pas de deux two young dancers, Ida Praetorius and Andreas Kaas, appeared beneath the screen, at first visible only as silhouettes, but then, as the light on the screen faded, they gradually came into full stage light and took over the pas de deux. They are both delightful dancers and a very good promise for the future – there is a wonderful bouncing quality to Kaas' high jumps. However, it is an eye opening experience to watch them immediately after Blangstrup and Bojesen, who, at the time of the festival, were at the very height of their powers and artistic maturity. There is still a long way to go for the young dancers before they can deliver with the freedom and apparent spontaneity of their predecessors That is why it is so important to have both young and less young dancers in the company.

With the amazing video of the first pas de deux from The Lady of Camellias in fresh memory, the live performance of the white pas de deux from the second act was looked forward to with great anticipation. Again Birkkjær was her partner. Apart from a short struggle with one of the many complicated lifts, it was a delight to watch the spontaneous and uninhibited way of their partnership. I never saw them as ideal partners, neither physically nor artistically, but their display of Marguerite and Armand's intense happiness and absorption in one another was a heartrending experience and rang absolutely true here.

After the interval, we, the audience, was given a surprise: Thomas Lund and Bojesen did the dance of the old Quaker couple from Galeotti's ballet “ The Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master” , their stoic and stone faced manners giving cause to much laughter in the audience. Another surprise interlude was a long row of dancers and choreographers sending Gudrun a greeting on video: Kylián, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Ulrik Wivel, Anne Marie Vessel, Frank Andersen, Mads Blangstrup and many more.

After this, three casts from the new Giselle production (premiere in a fortnight) danced a pas de deux from the second act, one couple taking over from the other: J'aime Crandall/Gregory Dean, Ida Praetorius/Andreas Kaas and Holly Dean Dorger/Ulrik Birkkjær. Apparently it was the wish of the dancers to show this pas de deux to Gudrun – probably her great interpretation of Giselle has been a source of inspiration to the dancers.

Giselle was followed by the Pas de Trois from La Ventana danced by Dean, Kizzy Mattiakis and Alba Nadal. Bojesen directed la Ventana a couple of seasons ago, which must have been the reason for choosing this for the programme. Kizzy Matiakis is the new principal dancer in the company, which is very well deserved, but Bournonville is not one of her strongest points, she is a bit to controlled to my taste in that repertoire (though she was a marvelous Birthe in A Folk Tale – mostly due to her acting abilities which are formidable–that is one of the reasons why I would love to see her Odette/Odile).

Right from the beginning it was clear that we wouldn't get much dance from Bojesen, and therefore  every scrap of live dance was looked forward to with eagerness. A pas de deux from the second act of La Sylphide was the finale of the evening. Thomas Lund, who stopped his dancing career four  years ago to be director of the Royal Danish Ballet School had a guest appearance as her James – it was a nice gesture but maybe not a great idea artistically. But it seemed important to have him by her side. He was her long term partner during the first decade of the centenary, a partnership that stopped when Hübbe took over and wasn't replaced by a new one – it seems Hübbe is against the idea of long-term partnerships. Probably it can be a hindrance of development if the partnership stagnates, but in some cases a perfect match can add an extra dimension to the dance. Many of us had hoped for a coupling of Lendorf and Bojesen, as they looked nearly perfect together in Swan Lake. I personally think they could both have grown in a more permanent partnership – the younger can learn a lot from the more experienced dancer, and the more experienced can get fresh inspiration and new vitality from the younger.

To end the evening with a death scene, not as the natural ending of a full ballet but completely detached from it, is, when not downright bad taste, just not a happy choice. But apart from that, the evening ended on a very happy note, with the Koppel jazz duo (piano and saxophone) playing a dreamy tune on stage while Bojesen received a red rose from a long row of male partners in the company. She looked really happy, and I'm sure she herself was happy with the night's programme, having  received so much proof of her popularity, both with her colleagues, who in many ways showed their huge gratitude towards her – she has apparently been an extremely generous, helpful and inspiring colleague – and with us, her audience. The only thing embittering the joy a little is that she has been so very absent from the stage during the last 5 years, giving all her great roles away to younger dancers. We – or at least I – have missed her in Swan Lake, La Bayadère, Nutcracker, La Sylphide and many other ballets, where she could have shone with her rare talent, but did not, for what reasons I don't know, but it is sad no matter what. The finality of an evening like this is always a bit overwhelming, but it was a great joy to see, that she, the central person of the event, looked really happy at the prospects of her new life – and new career, as many called it – as mother of a lovely little boy, whom we had the pleasure of seeing in one of the video clips. 

All the best wishes, Gudrun, and a heartfelt THANK YOU for everything you have given to us, your audience!

Gudrun Bojesen will perform for the last time on October 15. It has not been announced what she will dance, only that it is her evening. I wrote somewhere else on this site that there were very few tickets on sale, especially no good ones, but that has changed: A contingent of good tickets, mainly in the stalls and in one of the first upper circles, have been set on sale today.

Link to the theatre's page: https://kglteater.dk/det-sker/sason-20162017/ballet/gudrun-bojesens-aften/

There is no description in English.

Gudrun Bojesen's farewell performance will be October 15. I didn't see this before it was almost too late to get tickets (I got some very poor ones, but at least i will be there).

Link to the theatre's homepage:

https://kglteater.dk/det-sker/sason-20162017/ballet/gudrun-bojesens-aften/

They haven't announced what the programme will be, just that it is "Gudrun Bojesen's night".

I was there too last night and was delighted with most of what I saw,  though I must say I found it a bit hard to digest so many abrupt changes in style and expression. The programme is clearly made for open air performances for a broader audience. In a more professional venue with a paying audience this highlight-upon-highlight kind of programme becomes more problematic.

I cannot add much to your description, Syrene, but I'd like to mention a few things.

It was a special delight to see Praetorius as Juliet. I saw her some years ago when she had her debut as Juliet with Dean as her Romeo. Dean had more powers to camouflage the acrobatic demands of this pdd than has Kaas, but Neumeier's choreography will be a challenge to any young dancer. Juliet hardly touches the floor but clinges to him in an unending series of expressive positions. Praetorius has matured into mastery of this - everything she did communicated a meaning - whereas Kaas still struggles a bit. It looks, however, as if it is withing his reach. I was surprised, though, that I wasn't much in for Praetorius' performance in Bournonville act 3 of Napoli. It is hard to say exactly what I was missing, maybe some colour, or that she made some more personality shine through the steps, a little personal twist here or a tiny sway there - it was so very neutral, light and clean-cut.

And talking about Bournonville: It looks like the dancers have been allowed a less puritanistic approach to the steps, with many showy turns and leaps not absolutely in the style, but maybe it helps making Bournonville look less old fashioned to a new audience.

J'aime Crandall was sparkling in Don Quixote. This kind of repertoire suits her perfectly, and like our former principal Caroline Cavallo she delivers the most tricky steps and balances with a starballerina's calming selfassurance. Less suited to her is the elegiac beauty of The Swan Lake. Neither do I think Dorger perfect for it, being too meek to my taste, both in body language and type. I wonder if Praetorius has the expressive range for it yet, that will be interesting to follow (I can't remember whether she was cast as Odette/Odile last time they ran Swan Lake). Technically I'm sure she is already there.

The new dancer Wilma Giglio was a mixed experience. In Tharp's Come Fly Away she was absolutely right, but in the classical repertoire( Don Quixote and Bornonville) she looked oddly old fashioned - the way she holds her head and upper body and the angling of her arms and hands reminds me of some old footage from the thirties. I don't know how long she has been with the company, but it looks like it will take some more time before she melts in with the rest of the company and becomes the "Danish dancer" Hübbe talked about when he attacked the critiscism of having taken in too many Non-Danish dancers (see Syrene's resume above). But she certainly has some stage presence.

It as a great joy to see this clip, especially as I have only seen Bojesen and Birkkjær performing the roles of Marguerite and Armand. Lendorf and Grinder are very different from the other two, Lendorf being very youthful and fiery in his passion, while Birkkjær was a more desperate character and less inexperienced in his approach to Marguerite. Grinder has less "grandeur" than Bojesen and it looks like her portrait is more of a very fragile and vulnerable woman, 

Thank you for posting it.

During his leave he joined the company Gauthier Dance in Stuttgart.

Sebastian Kloborg, soloist with the RDB, has reached 30 last Thursday. In the newspaper Jyllandsposten you could read that, instead of staying another 10 years with the Royal Danish Ballet, he has chosen to leave for a freelance career as a dancer and choreographer in Munich.

It is sad for the RDB to lose such an interesting dancer, but I wish him luck in Munich and hope they will appreciate his versatile talent.

Thank you for posting this, Syrene. It was interesting to see Nadal perform this famous solo and do it so well. Without overdoing anything she always has an expressiveness that comes so natural with her. She is an eyecatcher, even in an ensemble, simply because she never just dances. Her face and eyes are always full of life and commitment.

I couldn't agree more: It is really great news that we might have a chance of seeing her once more on the stage. Thank you for posting a link to the interview, Jane. It is great to learn that she is happy in her new life as a mother.

There was a birthday portrait of her in Jyllands Posten on the 1st of February, a day before her 40th birthday - a full half page with a photo http://www.jyllands-posten.dk/protected/premium/navne/omtale/ECE8406988/en-danserinde-har-gjort-sin-pligt-med-sjael-og-naervaer/.

It said in the first lines after the headline (in my poor translation):

"She was a ballerina in a class of her own. One of those rare ones. One of those who combines a perfect technique with a radiant stage presence, so that you were never in any doubt, that what you saw was a star. Without at any time behaving like a star."

I saw the premiere of La Sylphide back in October 2014 in Copenhagen, and last month I went to see the two first performances of RDB's tour in the Danish provinces (the first one, in Aarhus, being the same one as you have reported on, Syrene). I'm afraid neither a second nor a third viewing made me warm up to this version. Apart from some fine details, the set up as a whole leaves me sadly indifferent. I cannot see how this way of telling the story adds anything to it, on the contrary, it deprives it of its multi-layered ambiguity, which is the very source of its fascination. But, as I have already written an extensive review of the staging after having seen the premiere in 2014 I will not go into details about that, and instead concentrate on the dancers and their individual interpretations. Fortunately the instruction still leaves room for individuality.

Ulrik Birkkjær's James was fine though not as perfect techniqally as he was at the premiere in 2014, where his leaps and turns almost took my breath away. His James is an interesting one. Already at the beginning he is not really there, his mind clearly floating somewhere else, and Effy is only able to catch his attention for very short moments. This James has already experienced something mind-unsettling before the curtain raises, and the sight of the Sylph might just be a materialisation of something he has unconsciously known or sensed for long. His Sylph was the technically strong J'aime Crandall – the dreaded pirouettes en dedans near the end of her first solo in act one and again at the end of the divertissements in the second act she performed spot-on and without a trace of a wobble. Her way of dancing Bournonville is in general very natural, and her movements have the right feather light quality without being contour less (she had, however, a very odd way of performing the steps, when the Sylph hesitatingly follows James into his room: She walks on pointe, but instead of just putting one foot in front of the other, she swung her legs like pendulums, which had an unintended comical effect). Her Sylph is a very determined and straight forward one. It is too strong to say that her perfomance has no nuances, because that is not true, but like her performance of Odette/Odile it lacks the lyriscism necessary for us to believe in her as an otherwordly creature.

Amy Watsons Sylph had a more romantic approach, less innocent, slightly calculating and with a "rounder", more traditional way of dancing. She has the sweetness of an overripe cherrie. Gregory Dean's youthful James didn't stand a chance against this creature, who manipulates him effortlessly. Dean portrays James as a very young man with a gentle and caring nature and a dreamy diposition. He hasn't yet experienced much of the world and is therefore an easy target for strong, manipulating forces like Madge and the Sylph. They simply root him up, and he hardly knows what has hit him before it is too late. He has a very loving attitude towards Effy, whom he is visibly fond of, and it is as if he tries to protect her against himself and against this chaos that has suddenly entered his world and made him loose his focus completely. He has a good grip on the Bournonville style, it flows the right way, but somehow it doesn't look right all the time – maybe it is something about being too vertical, too erect. When he jumps, he almost towers over the other dancers. He has a tall, lean built - maybe we have just grown accostumed to a series of shorter, lighter James'es during the last decade.

A small detail: When I saw the premiere back in 2014, there was a deeply moving gesture towards the end: When James sees his mother together with the newly wed pair of Effy and Gurn, he rests his haid against the shoulder of his mother in mourning of his lost life. Of course the mother doesn't notice, as they now belong in two different worlds (or maybe he is even dead). I was so sorry to hear that they had deleted this in the next performances. But here it was again, but only in Birkkjærs version, Dean didn't do it, he just looked on from a distance – maybe it is Birkkjær's invention. I hope he'll keep it.

Kizzy Mattiakis was Effy both nights, and her strong performance makes her a very central part of the tragedy. Maybe Effy is the one who loses most in the end. As a woman she has even less freedom to chose her own way than James has – James might have been her way out of a suffocating society. Mattiakis' Effy was so heartbroken it was nearly unbearable: despairing in the first act and totally numbed by shock and resignation in the second.

Gurn was perfomed by Alexander Bozinoff on the first night and by Andreas Kaas on the second. I prefer Kaas, as his rendering of the character is less silly, less boyish. And what a smashing solo he did - wow!

Sebastian Kloborg was Madge on both nights. And really, I don't know what to say about his performance. I'd rather focus on the incongruities that have been imposed on his role, which makes it impossible for the dancer to be anything but a stiff parody: A perfectly dressed fin de siècle dandy doing palm reading, refusing drink, and concocting poisonous silken scarfs in steaming cauldrons assisted by a group of "dishy" young men dressed in footlong black skirts, bare from the waist upwards, writhing and twisting themselves in something that looked like happy agony. The scene at the cauldron is actually very short but it felt like it would never end, as it was so terribly embarrasing and kitschy to watch.

Before the performance of La Sylphide with the RDB yesterday night in Aarhus, Nikolaj Hübbe told the audience, that one of the greatest sylphs - and one of the RDB's greatest ballerinas - had died recently. The performance last night was dedicated to her memory. Anna Lærkesen died on the 14th of january.

Dance and poetry - that sounds as an interesting combination, poetry being in itself a very musical thing.

I once had a really eye opening - or should I say ear opening - experience with Peter Schaufuss' Hamlet-ballet: Schaufuss had originally, in 1996, created the ballet in cooperation with the band "Sort Sol" ("Black sun", a Danish rock/punk band) who performed directly on the stage together with the dancers. Their music alternated with classical orchestral music by the weird, post-romantic composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1953). Quite an overwhelming experience. Some years later when Schaufuss revived the ballet, he couldn't any longer use Sort Sol and had to invent something else for the passages where Sort Sol had performed. To this use he had a brilliant idea: He played taped recordings of Hamlet's soliloquies from Shakespeare's drama, read aloud by Sir John Gielgud.

It worked beautyfully, an you realized how much music there can be in words.

Eva Kistrup has reviewed the Dance2Go programme in DanceViewTimes. The ironic headline of the article is "Garbo Speaks!", refering to the latest tendency in the repertoire, where the dancers speak and shout a lot:

"The modern part is presented by “Corpus”, the in-house company. Since their first season, Corpus has moved in a direction where choreography is less important than concept. Even comparing with last seasons “Fever Harbor”, with Tilman O’Donnell’s "In Life and Love and So On", they take almost the final step in a process of taking dance out of the concept dance."

In the same review she writes about the threat of more cut-downs in the already starving economy of the Royal Danish Theatre, which are near-fatal to the ballet.

The full article can be found here: "Garbo Speaks!"

I, too, think Matiakis is an interesting choice as Odette/Odile, with her wide range of expressions, I'm sure she will be able to establish a convincing character both as Odile and Odette (though here we will see only Odette). Technically she is very secure, I only doubt whether she will have the long, smooth lines for Odette. A pity I will not be able to attend any of the performances either!

Oh - I apologize for that, I should have checkeed up uopn that - that's the risk when you post old news.
But apart from that I'm truly sorry to hear that. It must be a great disappointment for him.

It is hard for me to say what I think about Stephanie Chen in that part, Syrene, as the role didn't make much sense to me. I didn't understand why she should act so very childish all the time - flayling arms and hopping around like a 10-year old - I suppose she was meant to be a youth and not a child. Furthermore it annoyed me the way she had to do the same things over and over again.

All this was of course not her fault but the choreographer's, but at the same time it makes it impossible for me to tell whether I liked her or not.

Eva Kistrup writes about Lendorf's appointment as a principal in the ABT on her site Dance View Times here (a bit belated on my part as I only discovered it today).

Many congratulations to Lendorf! I hope he will stay with the RDB parallel to this appointment. But with the serious cut downs in the RDB, which means very few productions and even fewer new productions, it is understandable that he seeks challengies outside Denmark.

I went Tuesday night this week. It started really fine: The opening picture of the first ballet, "The Death that best preserves" was delightful: The old lady in her "shell" far back and four young couples dancing happily in the corners, the girls wearing pretty, oldfashioned dresses in bright colours, while Tim Matiakis, naked upperbody and dark trousers, had a frantic and electrifying solo in the middle and frontstage. It was at the same time lovely and scary and kept you on the edge, your curiosity roused: What was going to happen? The entrance of Ulrik Birkkjær as the Death was equally spellbinding (– he is a true elegantier and leaps with astonishing precision and elevation, he shoots through the air like an arrow). His encounter with the old lady, helping her naked soul out of her earthly shell, her heart beat visualized by a flashing red light which she protected carefully with her hands, was truly original imagery. She speaks out her relief at his coming, and from then on, Death guides her gently and respectfully through the different stages of her life, leaving her time and space to come to an understanding of what was actually her life. The Death has never been portrayed more gentle. When it comes to the actual dying, his three servants take over (among them Tim Mathiakis ), and they are far from gentle. This is exemplified by their treatment of a happy bee (yes, a bee!). Once this bee has been introduced, the magic spell is broken, and at least I never really recovered. Comic relief is fine when used with artistry, but this was just toe curling banal and malplaced.

But still, the ballet as a whole had some fine moments, but it sadly lost momentum midways, partly because there is no logic to the structure of the story telling. During its fifty long minutes one never knows whether one is in the middle or near the end of the story: The old lady dies over and over Again. However, when finally the three servants of Death gave her the same treatment as they had given the happy bee, you knew that this time it was final (– maybe that was the true raison d' être of the bee.) But that didn’t mean that the ballet was over, far from…

Choreographically the sources dried out quickly. After 10 fine minutes one had the feeling that the creator, the czech choreographer Natalia Horecna, ran out of steps. Never have there been so many splits in one ballet, mostly peformed by female dancers sliding around and climbing on the body of a male dancer. Like in so many classical ballets the male dancers’ role was mostly reduced to partnering and “handling” the female dancers.

The lack of logic in the narrative was also the weakness of the last ballet in the programme, Sol Leon and Paul Lightfoot’s “Short Time Together”. Like Horecna’s choreography it is based on the classic vocabulary of steps, but twisted and, in the case of Lightfoot/Leon, enforced with sharp edges and statuesque qualities. The middle part with music by Bethoven was efficient and polished. The energy of the music corresponded with the movements, and every nuance of the rhythmic pattern was mirrored in the chroreography. But somehow it left you – or at least me – cold. And so did the frame story, which was added to the middle part especially for the RDB. I had no idea what the story was or what it was all about. Was it the story of the young man, who entered the stage at the beginning? Or was the young man the same as the old man in the grey suit looking down at the stage from the large screen, mirrored by a young dancer similarily clad on the stage, or was it his father? What was their relation to the woman/the women – were the three woman just different sides of the same woman? No idea! And what is worse: I didn’t care.

The ballet in the middle, "Know", was a puzzling affair, like watching a workshop. But no matter how much I tried to resist it, disliking it with my brain, I could't help liking it. Maybe the total abandon and spontaneity of the dancers overwhelmed me and won me over, and it didn't leave me cold like "Short Time Together". When Astrid Elbo at the end of her monologue took off her clothes, and just stood there, facing the audience, it was, to me, and surprisingly so, not embarrasing at all. It had an honest and vulnerable quality, which helped me take in her words, which in another context would have been utterly banal. To other people it was apparently very offensive – I could see a few people leaving the theatre few seconds after it had happened.

That the music was played backwards from the middle of the ballet, is a truth with modifications. It was a very manipulated and electronically remastered version, which covered the structure of the music and only let you hear the music in recognizable glimpses.

All in all the evening was a very mixed experience. But the over all impression was that of a meagre programme, dominated by uninspired choreography. Lots of good ideas maybe, but not matured and ready for an audience yet.

I have written an article about the ballet Short Time Together. For this article Gregory Dean was interviewed!

https://theballetblogger.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/short-time-together/

Thank you for posting this interview. Dean always comes forward as a highly intelligent and very articulate artist - apart from being a terribly fine dancer!

I have experienced the same, but it helped when i switched to another browser and used Google Chrome in stead of Explorer. Explorer works badly with this site.
I don't know if that is of any help in your case?