The Royal Danish Ballet, which opened a week’s run last night at the Kennedy Center Opera House, has sometimes been referred to as the “Danish miracle.”
It is a miracle indeed that a nation of little more than 5 million somehow has produced one of the oldest and most respected dance companies in the world, with a unique and priceless repertoire and an astonishing number of male dancers who have become stars on the international ballet scene.
The source of these remarkable achievements can be traced to August Bournonville, the legendary choreographer and ballet master who directed the company from 1830 to 1877. He not only created the ballets that give the company its distinctive repertoire, but also developed the technique that still shapes its style more than 100 years after his death.
Denmark’s small size and relative isolation sometimes give it a hermetic quality. In the case of its ballet company, this isolation proved benign. The Bournonville legacy was treated to careful preservation rarely achieved in the dance world. No other choreographer’s works have been in nearly continuous performance for such a long time.
The Bournonville style is joyous. There is a sweetness and modesty that is endearing. Steps are light and intricate — the arms soft and open while the legs flash in swift, difficult combinations. Leaps are airy; in a characteristic one, a dancer leaps directly to the audience with the front leg straight ahead and the back leg bent. Unlike the Russian style, in which a leap usually ends with the dancer holding a pose such as an arabesque, Bournonville style has dancers leap and land only to rise immediately in the air again.
Coupled with that is an emphasis on mime and drama. Bournonville was a great man of the theater; almost all his ballets tell stories, and his dancers are adept at enacting them. The sense of tradition extends to retaining older dancers (less true today) who bring unusual richness to character roles.
The system has produced male dancers who are world-class. Many of them have left and made their mark in a larger world, among them Erik Bruhn, Peter Schaufuss, Flemming Flindt and Ib Anderson. Another alumnus, Peter Martins, became a leading dancer in the New York City Ballet and is now its artistic director. Nikolaj Hubbe is a brilliant member of NYCB.
The Danes often feel that Bournonville is their precious legacy and their curse. Artistic directors, including the current director, Frank Andersen, have made a point of asserting that the company has a large contemporary repertoire in addition to its 19th-century treasures.
But it is those treasures that the world wants to see, and it will be Bournonville the company dances here this week. (On the weekend matinees, the well-known showpiece “Etudes,” choreographed by Harald Lander in 1948, also will be given.)
The RDB has not danced in Washington since 1992, with the exception of a brief appearance at the Kennedy Center’s International Ballet Festival last year that only hinted at the company’s potential. (Poor staging was the main culprit.) The chance to see its distinctive, joyous style is a rare treat here.
In Denmark, the company has felt an urgent need to enlarge its artistic vision. To that end, the RDB has gone through a tumultuous decade, bringing in foreign directors or inexperienced ones — four in 10 years. Most of them proved unsuccessful and left before their contracts were fulfilled.
Now the company seems to be finding a balance between old and new that will serve it well. It is gearing up for a festival in Denmark next year celebrating the 200th anniversary of Bournonville’s birth. The company’s current season in Copenhagen reflects a balance between its 19th-century heritage and contemporary works — a premier by Peter Martins, a couple of Balanchine works, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon” and two full-length ballets by Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky.
Featured both in Denmark and here is Bournonville’s full-length “Napoli,” a signature ballet for the company being danced tonight through Friday.
The celebrated third act of “Napoli” is a shining example of Danish tradition at work. Framing the dancers in their spirited ballet-folk dance duets and sextets are a group of youngsters, students at the school, standing on a bridge watching the festivities. Almost all the principal dancers performing so joyously in front of them once stood on that bridge and dreamed that one day, their time might come to be there, too.
WHAT: The Royal Danish Ballet
WHEN: Tonight through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
WHERE: Kennedy Center Opera House
TICKETS: $27 to $97
PHONE: 202/467-4600
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