The Gifted

Kenneth Greves Farewell Performance

Onegin by John Cranko

Royal Danish Ballet

May 17 2008

Kenneth Greve said goodbye to his Danish audience with a fabulous performance in the title role in Onegin.

When Nikolaj Hübbe had his farewell performance last month it was evident, that his dancing days were over. Interpretation and personality were intact, but the body was no longer able to perform the technical feats needed. Kenneth Greve who is from the same generation as Hübbe was on the other hand so fit for fight that he was able to bow out on one of his finest performances ever, leaving the audience stunned and very, very  grateful for having the priviledge of enjoying this amazing dancer for 15 years.   

When receiving the obligatory flowers after the performance, he may have remembered when he as a young aspirant he was asked to leave The Royal Ballet School. Luckily Greve did continue his schooling in America, and after being pinpointed by Rudolf Nureyew as the prince in Swan Lake at the Paris Opera and later as a principal in Vienna, was invited back to his parent company as a principal dancer and thus continuing a very impressive career.

Kenneth Greve is an unusually gifted dancer. Tall, fair and handsome with strong technique, beautiful line, a turnout to die for, great partnering skill and most importantly an intuative musicality and feel for dancing and a growing dramatic sense, that had help him to constantly broaden his repetoire from the Russian princes, he dances so eloquantly to carry strong dramatic roles like Onegin and Des Grieux in Manon. Kenneth Greve has also build a strong international following through guest apperances at Royal Ballet and other companies.

Never a Bournonville type he has never the less been the dominant Danish male dancer of his generation, and he has danced a bigger and broader repertoire than anyone else in the company. But more importantly he has set a high standard, that hopefully will continue to be the standard for the male wing of the company. 

In his final Onegin he showed all aspects of his dancing, including his fine partnering skills. I cannot remember the two major pas de deux danced so well and so dramatic for a very long time. Kenneth Greve's Tatiana was Gudrun Bojesen, a dancer he had only partnered for a few roles, and yet it was such an intriquing pairing that it could also have been a great partnership on level with the ones he had given us with Gitte Lindstrøm (Onegin, The Wish and Anna Karenina) Silja Schandorff (in more than 20 ballets like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Manon, Giselle, Apollon, Agon, Odysseen, Symphony in C and many other classical, neo-classical and modern ballets)  and his wife, Marie Pierre Greve, who will also be leaving the company to join her husband in his new venture as Ballet Master in Helsinki, Finland.

Marie Pierre Greve joined her husband for the curtain calls, and as she is not dancing a farewell performance, it is only fair to summerize her career and achivement as well. Marie Pierre Greve is educated in France and joined the company as one of the dancers brought in by Peter Schaufuss. Primarily a lyrical dancer she has graced the stage as Juliet, both in the Ashton and Neumeier versions, as a very beutiful Rosita in Far from Denmark and in a long list of classical and modern ballets. Where she reigns unmatched is that she has probably had created more original roles than any other dancer in the company like several roles for Tim Ruhton, Jorma Uotinen's Le Sacre, Alexey Ratmansky's Anna Karenina, Flemming Flindt's Legs of Fire and the title role in John Neumeier's The Little Mermaid choregraphed for her expressive and very flexible stage persona. She too will be missed by the Copenhagen audience.

A farewell performance gives the audience a welcome chance to show their appriciation for the full career of a dancer, and the applause was endless and heartfelt. Allthough the audience understands the need to forge a new career as ballet master, it is hard to accept that a dancer is ending his career when he is dancing as well as ever, but it creates a stunning memory of such untouched perfection and proof that dancing on the highest possible level really is possible.