Where Were You Sitting?

Bournonville's Next Steps

Commentary
Bournonville's Next Steps
by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

In June of 2005, the Royal Danish Ballet will celebrate Bournonville’s 200th birthday with a Bournonville Festival, its third, at which it will present the surviving ballets. It will be a festive time, but also a sober one. This may be the last chance to make the case for Bournonville. There are no credible opportunities for another Festival for years to come. Will the Danish audience, and the Danish dancers, want to keep him around for another century?

"La Sylphide" Restored

The Royal Danish Ballet
Opera House
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
January 17-18, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

When the curtain rose Saturday afternoon on the Royal Danish Ballet’s new production of La Sylphide it rose on a miracle. After four days of a Napoli that, one tried to tell oneself, might be the best that could be expected after the many changes the company has undergone in the past decade, the minute Gudrun Bojesen extended her long, beautiful foot and began to dance, time stopped. What we saw last weekend was, with allowances for changes in cast and designs, what we saw 11-and-a-half years ago when the company last danced La Sylphide at the Kennedy Center. The musicality was there, the poetry was there, the drama, the pacing, the beautiful soft, clear, modest dancing.

The Knight of Faith

Napoli
The Royal Danish Ballet
Opera House
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Tuesday and Friday, January 13 & 16, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

When it was new, August Bournonville’s Napoli (1842) was typical of mid-19th century ballets: a good story with fantastic elements, lots of local color, a stage full of individualized characters, classical dancing based on the French school, and character/demi-caractère dancing that helped place the ballet and added vigor and spice to the mix. Napoli is the only full-length ballet of this type to survive, and seeing it is a privilege. It’s not only a window on dance history, it’s the showcase for the talents and tradition of the Royal Danish Ballet, its custodian.