Thomas Lund:
”Teddy Goes Ballet”
Royal Danish Ballet School
Tim Rushton:
“The Red Balloon”
Danish Dance Theatre/TIVOLI Ballet School
October 2014
The family market is a significant and lucrative part of Danish Art and Entertainment market. Royal Danish Ballet has for many years put on a children’s ballet in the midterm break as well as a family oriented Christmas program. But over the last few years’ competition from other vendors have bought more variety.
This year Danish Dance Theatre put on a new version of “The Red Balloon” originally made by choreographer /company director Tim Rushton for the RDB School. The new production is danced by pupils from the TIVOLI Ballet School, a fairly new initiative by TIVOLI Gardens, where former RDB stars Peter Bo Bendixen, Ballet Master in TIVOLI and Niels Balle, formerly leader of RDB Schools offers ballet training for children.
The original production was centered about a ballet pupil, but this nevwr version is changed to a school class visiting the Carlsberg Brewery, where Danish Dance Theatre live in former industrial buildings.
The change makes the ballet’s eternally ongoing ballet classes less understandable. The ballet is hardly half an hour long, but the TIVOLI Ballet School children also makes a very long promo for their school before the ballet, including teaching the audience basic steps. It is not a good substitute for a real and stronger story.
Teddy Stays Popular
At The Royal Theatre you get the full menu that is Thomas Lund’s enchanting “Teddy goes Ballet” which include popular children’s television characters as well as most of the RDB school in a perfect balance.
Both ballets use music from the Swan Lake, but where “The Red Balloon” simply uses Tchaikovsky as accompaniment, Lund plays with the choreography and at the key point send the character Duckling on stage with his lifebelt to swim in the pond.
Thomas Lund made his ballet in 2008 on some of the dancers who are now the brilliant young generation of the grown up RDB, Andreas Kaas, Astrid Elbo and Ida Praetorius and it have had several runs since and is also available on a DVD. It is an establish house classics, but in this comparison also the best of the two productions, simply because Lund strikes the right balance between ballet and children’s entertainment.
One of the reasons why the present cast performs so well is the existence of “Company B”, the RDB children’s own ballet company, where they under the tutorage of choreographer Ann Crosset make their own productions, which tours Danish schools and also have performances on The Royal Theatre.
Award Season
It seemed therefore very appropriate that Anne Crosset was one the recipients of the annual awards from Friends of Danish Ballet. The main Award went to Lis Jeppesen, the Bournonville ballerina who developed into an outstanding character dancer.
Alban Lendorf picked up yet another award as Best male dancers at the Taglioni Awards, A new European Award from the Malakhov Foundation . Ida Praetorius was also nominated and RDB received a Lifetime Award.
Photo:
1. "Teddy Goes Ballet" photo by Henrik Stenberg. Copyright (c) Royal Danish Ballet
2. "The Red Balloon" photo copyright(c) Danish Dance Theatre
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