April 12 & 17, 2013
John Neumeier:
"Romeo & Juliet"
April 20,2013
The Annual Report 2012
Royal Danish Ballet
This week have seen the annual financial report of the Royal Danish Theatre following the cut downs and lay offs. There has also been two portions of the "Hübbery", an intro to the upcoming Bournonville programme and new cast members in "Romeo & Juliet".
The key figures in the annual report shows that the RDB performed better financially than the other artforms and has lost fewer attendees from the fall in productions and performances.
The ballet have also attracted big sponsorships and have the best track record for attracting a younger audience.
At the presentation of the annual report, CEO Erik Jacobsen admitted that the strategy of cutting both productions and performances had somewhat failed. The audience had not done what management expected of them: to concentrate on the remaining performances. The theatre reduced the activities by 185 performances and had 140.000 ticket fewer on sale. Of these only 115.000 tickets was regained for the remaining repertoire.
The RDB lost significantly less ticket purchase than the other artforms (approx. 14.500 tickets). The CEO rightly concluded that this strategy was wrong and aims to create more productions and more performances. The financial results was better than expected so it will be possible to get a bit more .
Budgets will remain tight and the dependency of sponsors will remain. Next years motto will be "more for more people" and Erik Jacobsen announced more reach out activities and new methods to bring in more audience by a secondary subscription programme.
The big challenge for Nikolaj Hübbe will be to get a better balance between the art programme and the reach outs.Hopefully there will be budget and sponsors for more productions and reruns. It was good that "Sleeping Beauty" performed well in the box office but still the ballet was cut even further to match the family audience, thereby losing several solos and ensembles which could have given valuable stage training for talented dancers. I hope that trend can be reversed.
The Hübbest Place in Town
The two editions of " The Hübbery" showed the out reach format back in shape, following a weaker period. Nikolaj Hübbe was on his finest form, and well in his comfort zone, hosting, but neither interviewing nor reading comic tales.
The two shows focusing respectively on men and prejudices regarding ballet combined snippet from "Romeo & Juliet", "Chroma", "The Unsung" as well as showing snippets from Ib Andersen's upcoming production of "Kermesse in Bruges" and Gudrun Bojesen's take on "La Ventana". That the format is succesful was proved by a young girl sitting in front me stating that she has now seen Apollo's solo five time, bur never yet the full performance!
The guest artists including two very funny lady comedians Ditte Hansen and Lisbeth Wulff in the characters of two elderly culture vultures with a crush on Nikolaj Hübbe and hammering the truths that RDB as most of of the danish culture industry is dependant on the plus 60 groups of devoted attendees.
The second programme also included a large segment where the ballet school and aspirants showed their skills in a charming and well put together format. The Copenhagen school now counts 93 pupils and the aspirants and eldest pupils took on the Pas de Sept from "A Folk's Tale with Tobias Prætorius as the leading dancer. Missing in action was second year aspirant Sebastian Haynes who performed in the first "Hübbery" as part of "The Unsung". I believe that shows he is now more of a company member than an aspirant. It was great to see the normally very reticent school opening up and performing in full force.
"The Hübbery" has proven a commercial hit will fulls houses. However we have yet to see figures proving that the news audience really moves on to the real thing and get the full apollonic experience.
A Lady for All Seasons
Maria Bernholdt has over the last five years emerged out of the corps to become one of our strongest character dancers. She was an outstanding Birthe in "A Folk's Tale" and still put more layers on her craft.
In "Romeo & Juliet" she has this season been the nurse and the prostitute before taking over the big part as Lady Capulet and presented a personal and well constructed character of the icy lady. In the breakdown scene following Tybalt dead, she managed a incredible sorrow and anger. Bernholdt is still a young and active dancer with a front row shade position in "La Bayadére". She can go very far as a character dancer and should soon get the change of doing Madge. Should anyone get the daft idea to produce a ballet on Margaret Thathcher she is probably the only character artist who could pull it off.
On Tueday next seasons repertoire will be revealed. Hopefully it will be a happy day.
Photo copyrights; The Royal Theatre
Photos: 1. Nikolaj Hübbe 2. Marcin Kupinsky in "Apollon" 3. Maria Bernholdt in "A Folk's Tale"
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