Hamburg Ballet, May 2014
Hans Christian Andersen watches his creation, the little Mermaid struggle through the many obstacles her writer puts her though. He cries for her, but nothing can get him to change her fate.
44 year old Hamburg Ballet star Lloyd Riggins gives life to the old master. Neumeier made “The Little Mermaid” for the Royal Danish Ballet. Lloyd Riggins build his career in the Royal Danish Ballet before joining Hamburg Ballet in 1995 and was the shining example that a foreign dancer could enhance Bournonville. Bournonville and Hans Christian Andersen were contemporaries and friends. Lloyd Riggins will stage Bournonville’s “Napoli” next year in Hamburg. Neumeier will make a new work for Royal Danish Ballet. Etc.
Either it is a very small world or ……
When Lloyd Riggins looks at his illustrious career, he feels that it is coincident like this that has characterized his career:
“In my mother’s, Barbara Riggins company, Southern Ballet Theatre, I was chosen to play Puck in a version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Rochelle Zide-Booth. She also told me to go to a Bournonville seminar, hosted by RDB in Michigan and even managed to get a part scholarship for me. In a way my career has been easy. I simply only had to tread on the stepping stone, someone magically put in front of me”.
That pattern seems to be recipe for his long career, but in reality his success probably have a lot more to do, not only with his significant talent, but his high work ethics and effort.
An Early Start
As a child he took lessons in classical ballet, tap and modern dance and played the piano as well. His mother had studied in New York, his older brother Christopher Fleming was a member of NYCB and danced several leads, primarily in the Robbins repertoire and his sister was on Broadway.
“Being the child of a company director, I had an inside view to the works of a ballet company. We were often short of money as a family, as the dancers had to be paid first. And we could only afford short seasons. Still I was absolutely sure that this was what I wanted to do.”
Lloyd Riggins planned to join his mother’s company, but the Bournonville seminar changed all that. At the seminar he was spotted by Bournonville experts Flemming Ryberg, Dinna Bjørn and Anne Marie Wessel Schlütter, which led to an offer to come and train with the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen.
So seventeen year old Riggins went on his first trip to Denmark and Europe.
“I was gobsmacked even before I reached the Royal Theatre! The culture, the architecture and the charm of the old city really got to me. When entering the theatre, Ballet Master Frank Andersen came running down to great me, a mere exchange student! But I soon learned the culture of the RDB, which is much like a big extended family.
Calling at the right time
What Lloyd Riggins could not have known, was the fact that the stream of homemade talents in the RDB was running slim. The company had up till then been almost self-sufficient in creating dancers, but a combination of a high pension age, too many dancers in the +30 segment, falling numbers of entrees to the ballet school and therefore fewer talents as well as perhaps too many pedagogical experiments the supply was down. The company has therefore decided to start employing foreign dancers. So Riggins could not have showed up at a better time. His initial stay in Copenhagen also gave him the opportunity to see several other ballet companies as well as RDB. It was a revelation for the Orlando boy:
“Actually the first production I saw was John Neumeier’s “St. Matthews Passion” with the Hamburg Ballet, and I was stunned. I have never seen anything like it. The stage was build out over the orchestra pit so the audience was really close. I was bowled over not only by the intense drama but also by the hight of the jumps.”
It did not take long before Lloyd Riggins, not yet reached his majority, was presented with a contract. Signed it quickly and then got a little hesitant, as he had not yet discussed it with his mother, who expected her son and employee back in Miami.
“Frank Andersen calmed me down and assured me that the contract could be teared up if I decided to stay in Miami. My mother, although a part of her would had loved to have me in her company, realized it was a big opportunity, so she once again waved goodbye and let a son go to major company.”
Being a Dane
The RDB Riggins joined was in the middle of a generation change. The stars who had made the 1979 Bournonville festival great was getting closer to the end of their career and there had been a significant gap of more than 10 years to the next generation. As a consequence the upcoming generation got a very early start. Lloyd Riggins, who is a few younger that the group consisting of Nikolaj Hübbe, Silja Schandorff, Rose Gad, Christina Olsson and Alexander Kølpin, never the less got on the bandwagon:
“Unfortunately Kølpin suffered from several injuries, and that catapulted me into some very meaty roles. There was also strong focus on Bournonville as 1992 would host the second Bournonville festival.”
Riggins has the speed, jumps and personality for Bournonville and during his seven years with RDB amassed a bigger Bournonville repertoire than any Danish dancer, if my counting is correct. He has danced in every surviving Bournonville work including two large scale reconstructions and often he had done more than one role in each ballet.
The Mentor
Ballet Master Frank Andersen had taken over the directorship in 1984, when Henning Kronstam resigned from the post, but Kronstam remained very much a presence at the RDB as a teacher, mentor and director. He took care of the Neumeier repertoire in RDB as well as many other productions. Kronstam himself was a pupil of Russian Vera Volkova, who from 1951 till her death in 1975, was the key teacher as well as a strong artistic influence at the RDB.
“Henning taught me to be a prince and to be a presence on stage. I was so lucky that he took an interest in me and gifted me with his big knowledge and artistic qualities”.
In a film by Anne Wivel, “Giselle” focused on Kronstam's production of “Giselle”, there are several scenes documenting his work with Lloyd Riggins learning Albrecht.
“I was clearly seen as a classical and Bournonville dancer. Maybe that was the reason why, I practically never got involved in the modern ballets that was produced in RDB. There was somehow always an important role - it could be Apollo or something else - that hindered my participation. I seldom had the experience to participate in a choreographic process”.
Meeting Neumeier
During Lloyd Riggins’ Copenhagen years, the company presented three Neumeier productions. Two of them were returning ballets, the successful “Romeo & Juliet” that still remains the favorite ballet of the Copenhagen audience and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. In both these productions, Riggins got double duty as Benvolio and Romeo and as Puck and Demetrius. But it was the third Neumeier program “All Our Yesterdays” combining the two Mahler ballets “Fifth Symphony” and “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, where Lloyd Riggins’ sensitive and touching portrait of the soldier reach his highest performance level.
In 1991 he also made an outstanding touching Lenski in John Cranko’s “Onegin”. The production was brought in as a replacement for a Heinz Sporli ballet on a Hans Christian Andersen theme. Sporli withdrew and the ballet, already with costumes and décor made, never made it to stage. Instead the Onegin with borrowed décor from Hamburg and costumes from Canada became the biggest artistic success in Frank Andersen first period as Ballet Master.
The Dark Skies
Frank Andersen had lived with criticism since his appointment to Company Director in 1984, but when a new board, let by TIVOLI CEO, Niels Jørgen Kaiser took over, it was abundantly clear that the board wanted what they described as an international profile, and chose Peter Schaufuss, fresh from two aborted postings as Director of London Festival Ballet and Berlin.
“I had very little confidence in that choice. My wife (Niurka Moredo, who had joined the RDB in 1990) and I loved to be in RDB and felt that we had made Copenhagen our home town and RDB our company. But when the announcement was made I put out feelers that I was considering new options.”
Riggins’ hunch proved to be right. The appointment of Peter Schaufuss turned into the darkest period in RDB history. Although he was terminated after only one season, his dispositions and repertoire choices had long term consequences. As well as loosing Riggins, RDB also lost Principal Yuri Possochov.
“I do understand why he wanted to stage his own “La Sylphide”, but it was never the less the wrong decision to throw out all the best Danish productions”.
Even Neumeier’s “Romeo and Juliet” was sacrificed for Schaufuss’s own production of Ashton’s “Romeo & Juliet. Lloyd Riggins also found himself relegated from Albrecht to the Peasant’s pas de deux (which was a Pas de Huit in Schaufuss’ production.)
“I was surprised and happy when John Neumeier called us back with an offer. John Neumeier has a principle of not harvesting dancers from the companies he works with. I am glad he made an exception. And I was especially pleased, when he said that he wanted both of us. Even though Niurka had done really well in RDB, there was a tendency to label her as Lloyd’s wife. I am so pleased that her career really flourished in Hamburg, where she later became soloist. Today she is a Ballet Master in her own right”.
So the Riggins’ was heading south. Never the less Lloyd Riggins kept the feeling that he had taken the easy way out and felt that he had let the company down. That may be one of the reasons why he later got re-entangled with RDB again.
A Strong Partnership
I do not know what John Neumeier expected of his new principal dancer. The reality was that Lloyd Riggins in Hamburg developed from the light demi character into a strong and mature dramatic force and became a key inspiration. Neumeier choreographed a number of ballets for him including a revamped “Hamlet” (partly based on his “Amled” for RDB), Petruschka in “Nijinsky”, and as Aschenbach in “Death in Venice”. In addition he also danced leading roles of the standard repertoire. Having Lloyd Riggins in the company gave Neumeier the opportunity to create more dramatic based role and Riggins thrived with the challenges.
Copenhagen Calling
In 2002 Frank Andersen was reinstated as Ballet Master at RDB and Lloyd Riggins was appointed first director and it was stated that he would take over the company within a few seasons. The interpretation in Copenhagen was that the popular Riggins should sweeten the bitter taste of the returning Frank Andersen, who had not yet gained either respect or popularity in Danish ballet circles. However Lloyd Riggins participation in the company management never reached the volume as was intended. It was not only a question of his Hamburg commitment, but also because Lloyd Riggins lost confidence in the Chairman of the Board, Niels Jørgen Kaiser:
“He was so keen to have me as company director. It was like he was totally blind to my limitations. I know, when a star dancer reach a certain age, he or she will almost automatically be considered good Ballet Master material. But the career patch of a star dancer is almost void of the basic requirements for leading a company. I told Niels Jørgen Kaiser:
“You might think me a good candidate, but frankly I would like to test myself as a teacher. I would also like to stage a ballet. I have little experience in people management. There are a whole lot of skills that is necessary to do the job. Why do you want me, when you do not know if I am up to the job?”
Still Kaiser kept trying to persuade Riggins. There was another reason behind his hesitance:
“In my view Nikolaj Hübbe was the obvious choice to lead RDB. And I am very happy that he finally got the chance. Another contributing factor to my final denial was the fact that I was not ready to give up my dancing career.”
Bournonville Director
Although Lloyd Riggins had turned down the offer to become company director at RDB, he accepted to make a new production of Bournonville’s “The Kermesse in Bruges” for the 2005 Bournonville Festival. The ballet has been the big hit at the first festival in 1979 but the production has become tired, and one new production had failed to make a good impression.
Lloyd Riggins took the radical route in his production:
“I wanted to get to the core of the ballet and to explore some of the character like Mierevelt the Alcymist. As he can make magic gifts, he must have some kind of over natural gift, and maybe his daughter, Eleonora could have some touches of a sylph? I also wanted to have a more flexible décor, so we were not boxed in a very stationary set. I really wanted to question some habits of the company. In a televised performance of “Napoli” from the 80ties, several of the corps dancers in the background telephoned their standard interpretation in. I wanted freshness”.
Riggins and designer Rikke Juellund also opted for very simple costumes and décor.
“Some of the older dancers were against that decision. In particular Palle Jacobsen, who had been leading villainous noble man in the 1979 production. He strongly felt that the role needed as flashy and big costume as then, where it almost was the costume alone that made the performance!
Strangely enough his generation was the one who had the strictest views on how to do Bournonville, whereas the older generation like Kirsten Ralov actually had much more liberal view. If a Bournonville segment did not worked, she had no problems in adjusting it.”
Napoli in Hamburg
Lloyd Riggins had not done any Bournonville productions since, but in November 14 his production of “Napoli” will premier in Hamburg. Rikke Juellund will also design this production.
“This is something I am really looking forward to. The big challenge is to present “Napoli” to a new audience who does not have the background knowledge of a Danish audience. This may influence how we tell the story. I will also create new choreography for the Second Act, where no Bournonville choreography has survived.”
John Neumeier was actually invited to direct “Napoli” in Copenhagen in the 1980ties, but declined as he realized there was little he could add choreographically.
For Riggins the chance to unite “his” two traditions seems like a big gift and an interesting foray into his next career.
Simultaneous with his long dancing career in Hamburg, Riggins has teached and is Ballet Master and has staged Neumeier ballets in Copenhagen San Francisco and Dutch National Ballet.
The Final Step
From 2015 Lloyd Riggins will be Stellvertretender Ballett Direktor at Hamburg Ballett (Substitute Company Director) as the first step in taken over the full directorship when 70 year John Neumeier chose to bow out.
At that point Lloyd Riggins will meet his perhaps biggest challenge. Taking over a company run by a practicing choreographer comes with a full set of challenges. Hamburg has danced works by a number of other choreographers, but the Neumeier works are the DNA of the company. Without the promise of working with the choreographer himself, will the company be as attractive for talented dancers? Which choreographers should be brought in to supplement the heritage? And how should the heritage be handled?
At a Bournonville seminar in Copenhagen, when discussing the future for Bournonville ballets, I asked John Neumeier the following question: “As you are the person in the room who has most in common with Bournonville by leading a company dominated by your works for more than 30 years, do you want your ballet to stay as they are or may future curators make changes? “Surprisingly Neumeier said that he did not oppose changes in his works. Still it is a sensitive question.
When Peter Martins took over NYCB, he supplemented the repertoire with more European style works, a full “Sleeping Beauty”, “Swan Lake” even a “Romeo & Juliet”. He continued to choreograph himself and ordered a significant number of new works from up and coming choreographers with mixed success. A reviewer talked last year of a company church yard of failed attempts.
In Holland Jiri Kylian had put a three year band on Nederland Dance Theatre’s use of his choreography to force them to be more creative.
At least Lloyd Riggins takes on the challenge from within the company. He has a good skillset and there will be a significant take over process. But only time can tell, if he can handle the challenge as well as his impressive career.
Photo Credit: Holger Badekow for Hamburg Ballett
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