Mr. Bournonville Senior and Junior

Two very Danish dancers — Flemming Ryberg and Thomas Lund — took center stage this week. One celebrating his 50^th anniversary as a dancer at the Royal Danish Ballet. The other as a co-author of his autobiography.

      

Flemming Ryberg, the great Bournonville dancer of the 60ties and 70ties, and Thomas Lund, the current leading Bournonville dancer has a lot in common. Both are very Danish dancers, both are extremely committed to saving the national dance inheritance, both combine the roles of virtuoso and character dancer and both have experienced long dry spells in careers that should have shined brightly and constantly if talent and dedication were the main determinator.

When Flemming Ryberg celebrated his 25^th anniversary, the performance was marred by a strike in the costume department that made it impossible for Ryberg to dance the part of James, a part he had shined in for many years, and a part that normally is beyond most dancers in their early forties. But Ryberg had kept his youthful appearance and had a tour en air that should be envied by most young dancers. Ryberg force was Bournonville and the poetic classics, but from his early years he had a knack for the character dancing as well. In the 70ties he managed to dance pas de deux, drummer boy and the general in Graduation Ball in one season. Unfortunately his major dancing years took place in the Flindt era, where his qualities were not used in Flindt's quasi-modern work. He survived and when Henning Kronstam took over he was a leading card in the Bournonville revivals including his own production of “La conservatoire”, where he also starred as a very elegant ballet master, and in the virtuoso parts in “The Kermes in Brugge”, “La Ventana”, “A Folk Tale” and Act 3 in “Napoli.”

Ryberg had already established himself as a leading mime, and although he did get to dance Madge in “ La Sylphide,” that part was owned by his former Sylph, Sorella Englund, and he wisely found his calling elsewhere as the most original mime of the last 20 years. Ryberg has also served Bournonville when he together with Bruce Marks and Toni Landers reconstructed August Bournonville's “Abdallah” based on an old script. Flemming Ryberg is a wonderful example of the old school of Danish dancers who serves the company from childhood to old age, and the audience must consider lucky by knowing that Ryberg has no intention of retirement. A retirement that would hit the company very hard, as he is the only world class male mime in the present company. A week prior to his anniversary Jiri Kylian choreographed a pas de deux for the 67 year old dancer, and in this miniature Ryberg still shone as brightly as ever.

 

Thomas Lund, who shares a lot of traits with Flemming Ryberg, is the co-author of “Danceglæde og springkraft (Joy of dancing and jumping force)” with Ole Nørlyng. The book tries to combine a biography on Lund and an everyman’s guide to ballet. When I bought the book I was amazed by the size of the book and numbers of colour photos. We do not produce many coffee table books on ballet in Denmark , but unfortunately the book does not live up to its cover. Although Lund gives vivid and in certain chapters acerbic comments to the difficult years and inadequate ballet masters he and the Danish audience were subjected to, Nørlyng is too placid a writer to really pinpoint the problems and he is too fond of small anecdotes. Yes, it is a funny coincidence that Thomas Lund used most of his spare time as a youngster playing doll theatre with Kasper Beck Holten, who today is the young dynamic leader of the Royal Opera Company, but do we really need a ten page summary of every play they produced on the cardboard theatre in Kasper's home? And although Gudrun Bojesen gives interesting insight in the partnership, Nørlyng finds it more interesting that a high lift was used to change the light bulb in Lund's Copenhagen apartment when no ladder could be found.

As a writer on ballet, Nørlyng, who is probably the man who knows most about early ballet music and performance history in the world, falls in the same trap as Erik Ashengreen, who tends to see dancers as over-grown children, hero-worships them and look down at them at the same time. So instead of using the opportunity to let Thomas Lund voice his knowledge, views and strong beliefs, Nørlyng cannot let go of Thomas as the eternal child star and therefore produces a book as boring as expected by soloist Morten Eggert, who according to the book, had stated, that a book by Lund and Nørlyng would be unbearably boring, because neither has produced any scandals.

 

I cannot help regret that the many illustration opportunities has not been used better. It appears as if there was no appropriate photo available, any photo was used, and therefore a reportage re. a tour to the US is illustrated with a snapshot of Rose Gad and Nicolaj Hübbe with a juice container and the segment with Gudrun Bojesen concludes with an image bank photo of a hot air ballon, simply because Gudrun voices an interest in doing s bit of ballooning. So much opportunity – so much waste.

 

Vera Volkova now in English

What a ballet biography can be is illustrated in Alexander Meinertz biography on Vera Volkova, the internationally renowned ballet coach, so instrumental in the careers of dancers like Fonteyn, Nureyev, Royal Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet, the later which she served for 25 years. The book published in Danish in 2005 is now available in English from Dance Books, and that gives the large international audience the chance to read about the formidable Mme Volkova, a ballet student from Sct. Petersburg, a refugee in Shanghai, a housewife in England and the founder of her own school in central London, a school which was the foundation for merging the Russian tradition into the emerging European Ballet scene.

After a year in Milan at La Scala , Mme Volkova came to Copenhagen and found her life vocation in developing young Danish dancers like Henning Kronstam, Kirsten Simone and Mette Hønningen to stars. Through Mme Volkavas international connections the Royal Danish Ballet gained the opportunity to work with the major international choreographers like Balanchine and Ashton. But as Alexander Meinertz's biography shows her influence diminished during the Flindt era, and she stayed on primarily for the sake of her very talented pupils.

Meinertz has travelled the world to talk to dancers and friends of Volkova, thereby creating a stunning portrait of the lady in the shadow, the coach who work is in the studio and one who had an enormous influence on world dancer and the development of the two leading European companies. The book is a must for all who share an interest in not only ballet is its present day but also in its creations and past.