Royal Danish Ballet
Choreographer's Workshop
February 18
THe Royal Danish Ballet have hosted annually choreographer's workshop for almost 20 years. The aim is to allow budding choreographers within the company to test their skill in a safe low-key environment. Over the years the workshops has given talented choreographers like Alexey Ratmansky, Tim Rushton, Michael Corder and Louise Midjord the start of their career. A few years back Cedric Lambrette and Constantine Baecher founded "Cross Connection" as a forum for new choreography. Due to the effort of this initiative this years budding choreographers comes to the task with more experience.
What is the biggest difference this year, is that Nikolaj Hübbe has given the choreagraphers a set topic. Whatever they choose to do, it should relate to Ballet Russe. It actually proved to be a good idea for most of the choreographers and the quality level of the ballets were significally higher than usual.
First out was a Pas de Deux to Debussy by Christopher Dean, newly appointed soloist. Dean has previously made a work for the Scottish Ballet. His ballet "Romola" was a classical romantic pas de deux based on Nijinsky and his wife's relationship. It was pretty but also pretty boring and a typical example on how ballet dancers choreograph.
The Benjamin in choreographic terms, Sebastian Kloborg based his debut on "Jeux". Realising that Nijinsky had originally wished to include a plane accident in the work, he sort of made Nijinskis wish come true and introduced a pilot and a lot of falling paper planes in his work. Knowing the background story it made sense which it would not have done on it own merit. However I must ad that three composers for a ten minutes piece is two too many.
Constantine Baecker retold " The Afternoon of a Faun" from the nymph's perspective looking back in time. He was blessed by his outstanding cast, former RDB star, Mette-Ida Kirk as the mature nymph and Mads Blangstrup as the faun. Both invested their large scene appeal and expressions to the work which must be considered Baecher's best ever. That most of the choreography was from the original does not really matter as the concept was so strong.
Like Baecher, Tim Matiakis has produced a lot of ballets for Cross Connection, without really convincing of his talent as choreographer. In this programme he was one of two choreographers basing their work on "Firebird". But where Iain Rowe, a former RDB dancer now studying choreography in New York, based his work "Memento"on the fact that Strawinsky made three scores for Ballet Russe, "FireBird, Apollon and Sacre" and comissioned a score which mixed the centrals teams, Matiakis took the bird theme a little to much at face value. With his composer Andreas Wetterberg he masterminded a multimedia work, including a bird watcher, played with all the skills of Morten Eggert, first on film and latter at stage. Matiakis has cast himself as the bird and wearing a sort of Papageno costume. Matiakis does not realise that the theme of bird movements have been perfected in "Swan Lake" "Blue Bird" and "Firebird" and he brings nothing new to the subject. By going the abstract route Iain Rowe on the other hand managed both to show the Ballet Russe theme as well as creating a new, sharp and exciting pas de deux for principals Susanne Grinder and Ulrik Birkkjær. A work that could very well be performed in a professional setting, which must be the aim of all budding choreographers.
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