Choreographic Growth House
Royal Danish Ballet
Zero Zero, Sascha Malmquist Bauer
Distance, Johann Lindell
The Ungentle Guest, Constantine Baecher
May 2008
A dark scene, electronic music, monotone movements. The Royal Danish Ballet is again trying to forge – or force – a link to new modern dance.
Over the last 15 – 20 years, the Royal Danish Ballet has hosted a number of choreographic workshops where dancers, primarily from the ranks of the company, have tried to choreograph small scale works. The company can certainly boast that at least two very good choreographers, Tim Rushton and Alexei Ratmansky, have passed with flying colours and today enjoy very successful careers as choreographers on an international scale. Likewise have Anna Lærkesen and Louise Midjord emerged from the programme into the professional scene. The results off the workshops were usually shown in informal surroundings in the training halls. Following the establishment of the new opera with a small second stage, the workshops are now showing in fully professional surroundings at a normal ticket price.
For this year's show, two newly graduated choreographers from the new dance education program were invited to choreograph alongside company member Constantine Baecher. I would have thought that this opportunity would be regarded as a godsend for the two chosen choreographers. To get the chance to present your vision of dance though the best dancers in the country on the national stage. But instead of presenting inspired and fully finished performances the two choreographers Sascha Malmquist Bauer and Johann Lindell stayed well within their comfort zone and instead gave us each a duet for two women, using none of the classically trained dancers skills, accompanying each piece with electronic sounds, and as far as a theme could be recognised it was the often used Verfremdung. To me it was an opportunity lost.
When dancers turn to choreography they tend to load their works with philosophy and mythology, and Constantine Baecher’s piece The Ungentle Guest is no exception from this rule. Inspired by a work of Bournonville's contemporary, the artist Bertel Thorvaldsen ,Baecher has made a character driven piece on the old man visited by Cupid, falling in love with him, sodomizing him and finally being killed by Cupid's arrow. Before reaching this bloody conclusion we get all the variants of the male pas de deux plus a rather unexpected Bournonville style solo from Eliabe DÀbadia’s Cupid. Checking up on the mythology it proves that Baecher reads more in to the work of art than there is base for. Yes, the old poet finds Cupid as a frozen boy, gets struck by the arrow and is able to fall in love, but there is no basis for turning this into a rape and being hit by Cupid's arrow is a metaphor for falling in love, not a brutal but justified killing. As such we get a well danced and well acted piece by D’Abadia and veteran Mogens Boesen, but also a work that is odder than odd in its mixture of styles, mythology and sexual innuendos.
The whole performance used only six dancers and, based on the missed opportunities and lack of quality choreography, seems to slight to justify a professional ticket prize. Surely it must have been obvious to the artistic management that this was too thin to put on stage. It should also send a signal that you cannot produce ballets by this recipe. Good and even average ballet needs resources, time, concepts and talent. As it was put on the roster and included in the subscription the larger part of the audience was season ticket holders, not devotees of the modern dance scene, and showed little appreciation for the offerings. Either the company should present these performances outside the subscriptions for an interested audience or, even better, make the real commitment to new choreography by giving better conditions and guidance for the upcoming choreographers as well as choosing the applicants more carefully to get a quality level that the audience not only can tolerate but applaud.
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