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Those Dancing Danes: The Royal Danish Ballet and the Original 'Mr. B'
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13629 |
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THE ARTS
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8 / 1988 |
1,497 Words |
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Todd Culbertson
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"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." The Royal Danish Ballet answers a balletomane's prayer. The company's two-week American tour gave rest--and peace, and joy--to ballet fans living far from Denmark.
What makes the Danes different? August Bournonville. The original "Mr. B" headed the Danish troupe from 1830 to the 1870s. He choreographed the ballets that have made the Danes' reputation. As George Balanchine created a company--the New York City Ballet--in his image and likeness, so Bournonville developed a company that, one hundred years after his death, still continues to reflect his personality and his vision.
Bournonville grounded his ballets in the bourgeois world. His works celebrate domestic values--family, nation, home. His heroes are not princes but fun-loving fellows who flirt with coltish or shy girls. "The purpose of art in general and of the theater in particular [whether its direction be comic or tragic]," wrote Bournonville, "is to elevate the soul and strengthen the spirit." The steps in his ballets pay candenced tribute to middle-class sense and sensibility.
Bournonville style
The Bournonville style is airy, light. The choreography emphasizes fast footwork and precise jumps. Danish dancers are famed for their ballon. They bounce; they float; they soar. One of the most beautiful Bournonville steps is the grand jeté en attitude en tournant in which the dancer leaps and turns, holding one leg in affixed position. The form combines gaiety and dignity; it is at once disciplined and free, youthful and mature.
The port de bras--position of the arms--further identifies the Bournonville style. When executing intricate footwork--the batterie--Bournonville dancers often hold their arms down, slightly curved, hands below the waist. When rising in a jeté, they open their arms toward the audience, in an invitation to the dance.
Several years ago, a Danish ballerina said that she considered Bournonville's port de bras symbols of her love for her art and her fans. If the Russian style is louder and more spectacular, the Danish style is quieter, and ultimately more satisfying. The Russian ballet provokes bravos, the Danish smiles. Bournonville said:
Joy is strength; intoxication is weakness. Noble simplicity will always be beautiful. The astonishing, on the contrary, soon becomes boring. The dance can, with the aid of music, raise itself to the heights of poetry, but on the other hand it can equally, through excess of acrobatics, descend to the stunts of the mountebank. So-called difficulties are executed by numerous adepts, but the appearance of ease is achieved only by the chosen few. The summit of talent is to know how to conceal the mechanism through the calm harmony which is the foundation of grace.
Ballabile and Tarantella
Companies around the world dance Bournonville, but none dances his ballets as well as the Danes. The repertory for the 1988 American tour included two full-length ballets--Napoli and Abdallah. Excerpts from Napoli--the ballabile and
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