In 2013 Ib Andersen, former Royal Danish Ballet and NYCB star returned to his Danish roots to produce his own version of August Bournonville’s ”The Kermesse in Bruges”. In many ways it was a totally new company he met. Young, eager, but not really that much into Bournonville. I met him for a talk about then and now and the artistic challenges facing ballet companies worldwide.
November, 1979. It is in the middle of the Bournonville festival. An eager student and ballet fan is sitting in the second balcony in a cheap seat with limited view close to the stage. She is worried, because the audience of international ballet experts does not seem to get the charm and humor of Hans Brenaa’s production of “Kermesse in Bruges” starring Ib Andersen, Mette-Ida Kirk and Niels Kehlet. She could not be more wrong. As soon as the curtain falls the international audience goes berserk. They throw flowers to the stage to the stunned stars, who do not know if they should pick them up, and after 13 full stage calls the verdict is in. The ballet world has found a new favorite ballet in the so far little known Bournonville piece which is then toured internationally for the coming seasons.
So 33 years after the festival, the star and the student meets to discuss “Kermesse” and the RDB then and now.
Like a Movie
When I meet with Ib Andersen, I meet an eager but also somewhat frustrated director. Following cutbacks at the Royal Theatre, rehearsals are limited to two hours daily and he fears he is running out of time to get all the layers in the ballet in.
“I have always wanted to do a production of “Kermesse” as it is a ballet that is constructed totally differently from its contemporaries. One can say it has a structure more like a movie than like a traditional ballet. There is no interval and the story flows effortlessly from location to location. It has a large cast with equally important characters, almost like a Robert Altman movie. Getting the balance right is the key to make the ballet work”, says Ib Andersen.
Talking about handling the Bournonville heritage, Ib Andersen says that he has different strategies for different parts of the ballet:
“The only thing we know with certainty is that when we see a production of Bournonville today, it will look nothing like a production in Bournonville’s own time. The trick is to be able to separate what is essential Bournonville and what has later origins. Regarding “Kermesse” I feel that the two pas de deux, in act one and in act three, the garden scene, are essentially Bournonville. I am aware that there are doubts about the origins of the garden pas de deux. But it is a good pas the deux of the period, so I will not change either. In the first pas de deux for Eleonora and Carelis, we get probably the best adagio ever made by Bournonville, who was not really into adagio. Here my job is to get the quality of Bournonville to shine. There are other parts of the ballet, some corps numbers, where I am 100% certain there is no Bournonville left and here I try to make more intriguing choreography.”
Bournonville for a New Generation
As the key characters in “Kermesse” are very young, Ib Andersen has cast age appropriately. Luckily the RDB has a very strong group of young dancers.
“It seems like the RDB talent comes in waves. I myself was part of a group of dancers born a few years apart who came into focus simultaneously (Arne Villumsen, Mette-Ida Kirk, Lis Jeppesen, Linda Hindberg, Heidi Ryom). Then there was a gap of 10 – 12 years to the next big group (Nikolaj Hübbe, Silja Schandorf, Rose Gad, Alexander Kølpin, Christina Olsson, Kenneth Greve etc.) and now there is a new very talented wave of young dancers emerging over a few years”.
For the two casts of Eleonora and Carelis, Ib Andersen have chosen first year dancers Ida Praetorius, Stephanie Chen Gundorph and Andreas Kaas and company star 23 year-old Alban Lendorf.
He is very impressed by Alban Lendorf’s high level of dancing.
“He is in my view probably the youngest dancer in RDB to reach his full package. Neither Peter Martins, Nikolaj Hübbe nor myself (three dancers who became principal at the age of 20), nor Henning Kronstam - I bet - had his degree of finish at such an early stage.”
“As a type Alban Lendorf is more like Yuri Soliviev, the great Russian dancer of the 60s than any Danish dancer.”
Ib Andersen has always had a good eye for spotting talents. He was the one who first recognized Silja Schandorf’s talent. Besides Praetorius and Kaas, whose career have already gained momentum by winning the Erik Bruhn Award, he has pinpointed Jon Axel Fransson and Stephanie Chen Gundorph as potential future stars.
“Jón Axel Fransson, who takes on the leading comedy role as Geert, is a unique performer. He has the gift to really communicate with an audience. He is naturally expressive and in some respects reminds me of Fredbjørn Bjørnsson, who could command an audience by sitting absolutely still on a big opera stage like the Met.”
Regarding Stephanie Chen Gundorph, Ib Andersen says she is still unaware of her gifts. The longlimbed dancer had an early debut as second year aspirant in the "Agon" pas de deux last year.
“She is a very poetic dancer, a bit shy, and does not realize her great beauty, traits that makes her perfect for the role of Eleonora”.
Echoes of Romeo and Juliet
Ida Praetorius has recently become a favorite dancer of the Danish audience following her debut as Juliet in John Neumeier’s “Romeo & Juliet”, which has been a continuous hit with the Danish audience since its premiere in 1974 with the then 20 year old Ib Andersen as Romeo and 19 year old Mette-Ida Kirk as Juliet.
That was the performance that really put those young dancers on the map, and the performance which all new casts are judged against. Type wise, Kirk and Andersen were, as phrased by Danish reviewer Henning Jørgensen, a coup of Zeffirellian typecasting. But it was also a casting of two very talented dancers. Ib Andersen’s own views of the ballet are mixed:
“John Neumeier has a great sense of drama, but his steps are rather awkward and illogical. His big coup was to dare to cast as young as he did. There is a special quality of youth that conquers everything. It does not last and you cannot build a career on it alone. But in my view it was the key to making the story as touching as it became”.
When I remind Ib Andersen that the ballet also includes a lot of complex lifts which could not be done by youth alone, he reminds me that his Juliet, Mette-Ida Kirk, weighed less than 40 kilos. Still I do disagree that it was youth alone that settled the score. The talents and future careers of Kirk and Andersen proved much more potential.
Big Potential
Kirk and Andersen were among the last pupils of Vera Volkova, the Russian teacher who did so much for the RDB and the international ballet world. Ib Andersen joined the aspirant class one year early as his primary teachers Flemming Ryberg and Kirsten Ralov said that he had outgrown their teaching. Prior to Ryberg and Ralov’s classes he had joined the ballet school at age seven and one year later joined Hans Brenaa’s class which also encompassed 15 year old Peter Martins and 13 year old Peter Schaufuss.
“It was not a pedagogic method I would recommend, but it was the old standard practice at the RDB school. The school dropped the practice later in favor of smaller age groups in each class”.
Although he had big potential, Volkova’s and Henning Kronstam’s focus lay elsewhere.
“Their project was to develop Arne Villumsen into the outstanding danseur noble he became and for him to carry Henning Kronstam’s own mantle. They did not really have a clear plan regarding me,” says Ib Andersen and stresses that neither he nor Arne Villumsen saw each other as competitors, but as dancers with different qualities and employ. I interviewed Arne Villumsen some years ago and he also subscribed to the view of colleagues rather than competitors with a great respect for the other’s skills.
Flemming Flindt, who was the ballet master in Ib Andersen’s formative years, saw him as a primarily classical dancer, and he got the leading roles in “Etudes” and “Swan Lake” very early. But it was the guesting choreographers that really kick-started Ib Andersen's career.
As an aspirant he was cast as the lead in Rudi van Danzig’s “Monument for a Dead Boy” and he was the bridegroom in Lar Lubovitch’s “Les Noces”, but it was Romeo that catapulted him to the position of audiences' and critics' favorite. A position he strengthened as the lead in Glen Tetley’s “Sacre de Printemps”.
Casting Rules
Ib Andersen was a founding member of The Bournonville Group, who produced their own tours bringing Bournonville abroad. At the RDB he danced lot of Bournonville, but mainly the solos, pas de deux and junior leads.
Henning Kronstam, who took over from Flindt in 1978, and Hans Brenaa shared a similar view regarding casting company classics:
“It was like they had a set of rules, where one role should be danced by a fair-haired dancer. Another should be dark and so on. Their grid did not really cater for my type”, Ib Andersen explained.
As a consequence he was not cast for the two big Bournonville roles James in “La Sylphide” and Gennaro in “Napoli”.
“I did get a shot as James, when I guested after I joined NYCB” says Ib Andersen, “I could tell from the reaction of both Kronstam and Brenaa that they were pleasantly surprised. They had not really believed that I had it in me.”
The Power of Intuition
When Hans Brenaa directed the 1979 production of “Kermesse in Bruges” he relied on his intuition, memory and experience from working with theatre and comedy.
“He did not have an analytical approach to Bournonville and was certain that if it felt right to him, then it was the real Bournonville. He was fun to work with and gave us lot of confidence in what we were doing. It all helped us make the characters come alive. A big part of the success should also be attributed to the skills of dancers like Niels Kehlet, who was outstanding as Geert and the other strong character dancers. My generation has got lots of accolades for Bournonville but the truth is that the generation before us, Flemming Ryberg and Arne Bech, was the real deal.”
For his own production, Ib Andersen also wishes to explore all the different relationships in the story and get the comedy working its magic. To achieve that goal the timing must be perfect and that demands more time than is available, due to the new restrictions on rehearsal time. He fears that he cannot achieve all he wants within the given time frame.
Going Arizona
Ib Andersen has spent most of his career in American ballet, first as a star in NYCB, where Balanchine choreographed “Mozartiana” and two more ballets on him. He retired from dancing in 1990 and following a career as teacher and choreographer took on the leadership of Arizona Ballet in 2000. He has managed to raise the company’s status to a level where they can do Balanchine and classics, including Bournonville, on a high level as well as works by Ratmansky and other contemporary choreographers. He himself still choreographs the major part of their repertoire, including his own versions of “Nutcracker”, “Cinderella” and “Romeo & Juliet”.
“No company in America has the financial resources of the big European opera houses. Money is a constant worry and there are not budgets for the lavish productions, and therefore choreography is the star in America. We cannot, like the Europeans harvest on high productions value and designs. The European companies, especially the RDB, can create magic by the combination of drama, dance and scenery. Both markets are hit by the lack of good contemporary choreography for the classic dancers and therefore all the big companies depend on a small handful of choreographers like Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. ABT, the Royal Ballet, the Mariinskij, the RDB, the Canadians and to a high degree also NYCB are becoming more and more alike, presenting the same works. The big ballet companies are also losing their individual styles by recruiting dancers internationally. There used to be house styles, based on the company schools, but now everybody tends to look the same. It creates a generic look that in my view is less interesting and it costs on the unity of the corps,” Ib Andersen reflects.
This is also true for the RDB, where 35% of the dancers are non-Danish. That the percentage is not higher is due to a strong performance by the ballet school which has developed 20+ dancers during the last years. It will be this group that takes most of the starring roles in Ib Andersen’s production.
Regarding high production values, Ib Andersen’s “Kermesse” offers the full European experience with stunning sets and decors by the French designer Jérôme Kaplan, who also did the designs for Christopher Wheeldon’s “Sleeping Beauty“ for the RDB. As Bournonville set his ballet in the year 1640, Kaplan has designed everything to re-create Bruges in that particular year.
So all is set in motion to bring “Kermesse in Bruges” not only back to its former glory: if Ib Andersen reaches most of his goals, it could mean a new – and more reflective – way to interpret and present Bournonville.
Post script:
A Happy Ending
In the end, the performance proved that Ib Andersen had no need to worry. His “Kermesse in Bruges” is the strongest Bournonville production of many years and a favorite with both audiences and reviewers who unanimously gave very positive reviews. He is a link to my own review which concludes in the hope that we might see more to Ib Andersen in Copenhagen and that his production should be toured.
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