What Nikolaj Hübbe did next
Nikolaj Hübbe is returning to US for a four city tour as Ballet Master for his parent company
“To take the company on an international tour is a goal I sat for myself, when I started my tenure as Ballet Master three years ago. I sat myself the task of bringing the company to a standard, where an international tour was feasible and sensible and I also saw it as a milestone for myself. This was a target I demanded myself and the company to reach,” says Nikolaj Hübbe, when asked why the Royal Ballet is touring USA and why they are doing it now.
Looking back in company history the great tours to USA from the 1950-ties to the 80-ties are important milestones and crucial in building international awareness and as importantly an international fan base, which has proven to be devoted and constant. Since then smaller US tours have take place, but several of these where ill-timed and too small scale. This year tour generously sponsored by The A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation is as big scale as the famous tours and will cover California, Washington and concludes in New York at David H. Koch Theater, the theatre that has been Hübbe’s home ground during his 15 years tenure at NYCB.
It could look like the return of either the prodigal or the triumphant son, but when one speaks with Hübbe, it soon becomes very clear that the tour has very little to do with his former NY ties but all to do with what is his life mission now: To develop, inspire and lead his parent company Royal Danish Ballet, a mission that include both looking back and moving forward.
Handling Heritage
Inheriting the RDB one also inherits the company with the strongest historical ties, the famed Bournonville tradition, the only existing link to the romantic ballet period. Yet Hübbe has dared to tangle with the family silver and have produced new and somewhat provoking versions of two of Bournonville’s key works: “Napoli” and “A Folk’s Tale”. Compared to his 2004 carefully restored production of “La Sylphide” his two newer productions are going far, and some might say too far. “In Napoli” he moves the setting to the fifties and a Fellini-inspired environment and”A Folk Tale” is moved the traditional renaissance setting to a late 19th century Denmark. But the reasons for being so radical is more founded in his role a Ballet Master than as a stager bent on change.
“The Bournonville tradition is a great heritage for the dancers, but it can also be something of a straight jacket. As a dancer you need to focus on the “now” of the performance. Yet everything in our traditional productions links the dancer to the past. For instance the costumes we wear have been worn not only by our immediate predecessors but also by dancers half a century ago. I once wore a costume, earlier worn by Børge Ralov, who was the leading dancer of the 1930ties. These conditions make it difficult to take ownership of a part, as you are constantly made aware of the linage. By whipping the board clean, I gave the dancers and myself the possibility to look at the material anew and give the dancers the experience to create the roles as new. It was no longer a question of matching what has been done before, but giving the dancers the experience of co-creating the famed characters from new and as their own,” Hübbe explains.
Yet Hübbe and his team discovered, especially in the famed third act that it was difficult for them to go the whole mile. It suddenly seemed sacrosanct to play with the crown jewels.
“It seemed like changing the national tune. At the same time my designer got so attached to the original costumes, that she was reluctant to keep the modern look, so we compromised and did not move as much time wise, as we had originally planned. From where I am standing now, a part of me would like to redo the third act and make the connection stronger with the first act and maybe change some costumes, but it has not been financially possible and so at least the American audience will see a third act that is rather familiar,” says Hübbe.
One other parameter Hübbe changed in “Napoli” was casting principle. The key role the fisherman Gennaro is normally cast as the ultimate macho alpha male, but this time Hübbe casted younger and softer types like Ulrik Birkkjær and Alexander Stæger, thereby slightly changing the persona. It was like we saw Gennaro as an adolescent. Hübbe’s motivation for the change was that he wanted to use specific qualities in the dancers:
“Alexander Stæger is such a natural actor. There is a special serenity in his action. He cannot lie in a gesture, and I wanted to use that special quality in the production,” says Hübbe.
Compared to “Napoli” the changes in “A Folks Tale” are almost cosmetics.
“I hope the audience will appreciate the beautiful décor and loose themselves in the great acting and dancing. It may be difficult for an audience to understand the substantial change for the dancers to be able to feel that the roles are created on them and their strengths. But this is the true benefit of the clean slate approach,” says Hübbe.
Challenging times
When Hübbe took over three years ago, he inherited a company that was top heavy. Most of the principals and soloists were heading towards retirement. There were few young dancers in the company. In reality the situation turned worse for Hübbe. Not only did Silja Schandorff and Rose Gad retire after his first season when they reached the retirement age. (Silja Schandorff remains a strong force in the company as Hübbe’s Deputy Ballet Master). Kenneth Greve accepted the post as ballet master in Helsinki and his wife, principal Dancer Marie Pierre Greve naturally followed him to Helsinki. Then Caroline Cavallo got injured in her last season and Yao Wei also had health problems that led to a long absence and she has now retired from dancing.
“I lost five good principals within 18 months”, laments Hübbe, and yet worse was to come. In his second season, principals Mads Blangstrup, Andrew Bowman and Kristoffer Sakurai, the three men supposed to take the leads all got injured, and Kristoffer Sakurai has since decided to stop dancing.
Other major challenges was the fact that the back catalog of RDB productions did not include many good productions and the financial resources of the theatre was strained, mainly due to cut in public finances and the cost of running the new opera and drama houses.
Considering these challenges, what Hübbe have achieved in his first years as Ballet Master is no less than astounding. It is more than a case of when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. The transformation the company has gone true is probably more the result of knowledge, values, a cunning sense of what suits the company and the ability to inspire rather than the true grit and dare, that Hübbe obviously pocess. Hübbe has strong ideas on how his company should dance and what they should dance. He resents the popular notion that RDB is foremost a dramatic company.
“I do not like the label and I do not see a demarcation line between the drama and the dance. A so called abstract ballet can be more dramatic than a story ballet,” says Hübbe and to demonstrate his point sings the ending of “Symphony in C” Second Movement using the steps names as lyric. Hübbe’s interpretation can be seen in his artistic choices. He has used “The Balabile” from “Napoli” and “The Reel” from “La Sylphide” as stand-alone pieces and thereby proving how great a choreographer Bournonville is beyond the character-driven plots. And it is certainly no coincidence that his seasons have included classical masterpieces like “Swan Lake”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Symphony in C”, “Etudes” and for the coming season Balanchine’s “Nutcracker”. The result is that the RDB corps has now raised the bar and creates magic in big movement’s ballet. There is no better example than “Serenade,” a company standard piece danced for decades and where it usually was hold up by the soloists, it is now the corps providing the magic feeling.
But it would be wrong to think that RDB has lost the dramatic qualities or that Hübbe is working in a different direction. It is simply so that he does not see it as a question of opposites. A good example is his casting of the pivotal role as Birthe, the troll turned nobility lady in “A Folks Tale.” Birthe is a role historically cast with a strong dancing ballerina, but Hübbe chose two strong character dancers, one soloist and one from the corps to recreate the part, and he actually gave the role more dancing time.
Bold choices
For his first season, Hübbe made the bold choice to give Bournonville a rest and instead build the season on many ballets, which in their own right was as much part of the company DNA as Bournonville. The repertoire included his own “Giselle”, co-directed with Sorella Englund, “Onegin”, Neumeier’s “Romeo & Juliet” and Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” and “La Sonambule”. The mixture seemed designed to explore parts of the company’s strengths and history and to remind us that RDB is truly a company with exceptional skills on a broad platform.
But Hübbe is not interested in broadening the platform too much. Actually he thinks that the company previously has tried to stretch too wide dancing anybody and anything. Hübbe is very committed to the classical base and has stated that new choreography is mostly done to give the dancers the experience to work with a choreographer.
For his second season he made two brilliant repertoire decisions. The first was to restage John Neumeier’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream “a great hit during the 1980es. What the restaging showed was how well this ballet is suited to the company, where it caters for a classical/modern star couple, a young ingénue couple, a character couple and a whole bunch of meaty character roles. Secondly he made a two night programme, where one focused female oriented choreography and the other male dancing. A ballet choreographed by fellow Dane Kim Brandstrup was danced by both teams. But the revelation of the programme was not the Brandstrup piece, but a little something put together by Nikolaj Hübbe and principal dancer and in-house Bournonville specialist Thomas Lund. Bournonville left a legacy of variations used for class, and Lund and Hübbe arranged a selection for 12 men set in a somewhat modern frame which accentuated the old steps beautifully. Suddenly Bournonville was hot but more important the work showed not only the quality of the step but also the strength in the male ensemble.
It is raining men, Hallelujah
How was this performance possible? Consider the aged company Hübbe took over, the long inability to produce dancers from the local school and the number of injured stars. How could we just two years later enjoy not just a couple of decent dancing youngsters but a bunch bursting with energy and skills?
The group dancing “Bournonville Variations included Danish Ballet Scholl alumnies: principal Ulrik Birkkjær, soloists Sebastian Kloborg and Nicolaj Hansen, Alexander Stæger, Christian Hammeken and as a replacement in one of the most difficult variations Jon Axel Fransson, still in aspirant class and that other boy, what is his name? Alban Lendorf.
Lendorf, at that time just turned 21, is one of the most amazing dancers coming out of the RDB School for many years. Much interest is on him and rightly so, but in this case the interesting story is not how well he dances but how well the whole group is dancing. A super talent like Lendorf can appear without depending on the school or the artistic management. Lendorf would probably be a star, no matter how bad the company was run, but getting the whole generation in gear is a credit not only to Hübbe but also to RDB School director Niels Balle. And simultaneously we saw several of the non-Danish dancers in the company step forward and reached principal and soloist level. I am talking about dancers like Marcin Kupinsky and Gregory Dean taking the steps from the front of the corps to soloist and principal’s roles. And all this has happened in just a few seasons.
“Bournonville Variations” will be performed during the tour and the tour also include a modern all male ballet Jorma Uotinen’s “Earth”, a piece of tribal contents oozing testosterone.
“I hope the audience will realize that the two very different ballets is danced by practically the same group of men, first as dazzling Bournonville virtuosos and then as savage beasts”, says Nikolaj Hübbe.
The Girls wing
When seeing the company in USA, an audience might feel that the lineup of female stars will be thinner than the men. It is true for the tour but not representative for the company as such. A high percentage of the female principals and soloists are either injured or on maternity leave. This has been a challenge during the season but has also made it possible for younger girls and experienced dancers in the corps to move forward.
My interview with Nikolaj Hübbe took place shortly after the premiere of the last programme in the season, where injuries allowed newly appointed American soloist J’aime Crandall to get the chance as the ballerina in Harald Lander’s “Etudes”, an RDB signature piece. Hübbe was very impressed with Crandall, who also earlier in the season danced Aurora in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Sleeping Beauty” on very short notice. Crandall is a small, technically strong dancer and not the type normally chosen for the glamorous ballerina role, yet her performance dazzled both the audience and the Ballet Master, who was flabbergasted of her original take of the material.
“J’aime is so strong, so fast and so eager that is easy to hand her these last minutes take overs and she always comes true. But it is really not fair on her to give her so short preparation time,” says Hübbe and I get a very strong inkling that he might be on the lookout for a real treat to Crandall, this time with more preparation time.
Hübbe is nothing if not brave and earlier this season 21 year old Hilary Guswiler found herself in the lead role Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake” on a very short resume. Guswiler was also one of his choices for the female lead in “A Folk’s Tale”, Hilda and is clearly marked for even greater things.
Crandall was recently appointed soloist together with Alexandra Lo Sardo and Lena-Marie Grüber. The three girls have shone in various divertissements and are now taking on leading roles. In USA the female wing will be lead by Dane Susanne Grinder and American Amy Watson, both dancers with a great versatility and hopefully leading ballerina Gudrun Bojesen will overcome minor injuries to show her superiority not only in Bournonville.
I have interviewed several of these dancers in relation to the tour and both Bojesen and Watson definitely feels that they now find themselves in another kind of employ that where they have expected to be. Bojesen is now dancing a much more mature repertoire and Watson find herself in white tutu roles.
Keeping Quality
It seems like Hübbe is challenging his dancers to move in new directions. He favors a multi-cast strategy for most ballets, giving a number of dancers a shot of leading roles, and though it might spread the talent too thin, the casualty rate is surprisingly low.
As the tour moves closer, the repertoire for tour gets smaller. Already a bit concerned regarding the limitations in tour repertoire, I asked Hübbe the reason for the dwindling numbers and he explains:
“The number of ballets and the number of performance simply does not add up. We cannot maintain such a high number of ballets if they only get a few performances each. This is the reason why “La Conservatoire”, “Etudes” and the Wheeldon’s “Sleeping Beauty” are left at home.”
The size of the stages also demands that “A Folk’s Tale” and the full “Napoli” can only be performed in Washington.
My final question to Hübbe is what his success criteria is for the tour and he answers that he hopes the company by travelling together and doing 24 performances for a new audience will get the company to reach the next level and build confidence.
My hope is that the American audience by seeing what Hübbe has been able to do for this company in a few seasons and to discover the depths of talent and skill in the company will get an insight of what a ballet company also can be and enjoy the treats of both dancers and the tradition. I hope they will not focus too much on the new look of “Napoli” and scream murder, but instead will take that second look that will confirm that this production is not a sacrosanct attack on Bournonville but an experiment with some merit and a key production in relation to create ownership of Bournonville for the young generation. Nikolaj Hübbe has been nothing but a positive force for the company. The tour will only show a part of what he has achieved and what his unique understanding of the company and repertoire has built and I hope that the audience can get the message from the selection of works.
Photoes Copyright Royal Theatre
Portraits of Nikolaj Hübbe
Thomas Lund in Napoli
Hilary Guswiler in Serenade
Alban Lendorf and Alexander Stæger in Bournonville Variations
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