Gregory Dean:
”Blixen”
Royal Danish Ballet
Second Cast
November 16, 2019
The Old Stage
When the casting of “Blixen” first was announced, it became clear that Kizzy Matiakis would dance first cast Karen Blixen from adolescence to 77 year old. Regarding the second cast Gregory Dean would split the role between Ida Praetorius as the young Karen Blixen and by retired star Gudrun Bojesen as the older version. I worried about the second solution. I could not have been more wrong.
While Kizzy Matiakis made a fine and believable portrait of a life span, the double act of Ida Praetorius and Gudrun Bojesen made the character´s development stronger. It seemed like we got two more years at the beginning and the end. Blixen became both younger and older and the story bigger.
Bring in the Stars
Bringing back former RDB stars and character dancers is probably the best decision, Nikolaj Hübbe and Gregory Dean made. There is so much acting skills in the group, taking on the roles as parents, grandmothers, aunts, aristocrats etc.
Then there is Gudrun Bojesen. During her successful career, Gudrun Bojesen was a unique ballerina in Royal Danish Ballet. She was a link to Bournonville and the classics, a dramatic star in ballets like “Lady of the Camellias” etc.
Last night she entered the stage as the mature Karen Blixen in the opening scene and presented an interpretation of the famed writer, that was nowhere like anything she has shown us before. A tower of strength, a manipulator and a fighter. She even managed to look exactly like Karen Blixen. It was a character study on the highest level.
It happened at a Ball
Ida Praetorius made her entrance as the younger Karen Dinesen in the ballroom scene where she meets her future husband Bror Blixen. Karen is in love with his twin brother Hans, who does not have eyes for her. However, Bror Blixen danced and acted brilliantly by the mercurial Jón Axel Fransson, who somehow persuades Karen Dinesen to an engagement and buying a farm in Kenya.
The ballroom scene is like several other scenes in “Blixen” big numbers for the corps the ballet and an astounding numbers of the Dinesen-, Blixen- and Frijs relations. Of course, the latter family brings on no less than four daughters, including Karen Dinesen´s close friend Daisy, brilliantly danced and acted by soloist Lena Maria Gruber.
No time for Writing
The ballroom scene is not the only big ensemble number in the ballet. However, these numbers steals space and time from the plots and the main characters. For instance, there is no room for showing Karen Blixen´s interest in and relations with the group of Kenyan farm workers, which is a key point in her writings, especially in “A Farm in Africa”. Yes, she does have short conversations with Farah, the right hand man on the farm, but that is about it.
Gregory Dean includes scenes of the breaking down of Karen and Bror Blixen´s marriage. However, there is hardly any focus on Karen Blixen´s writing career. We see her go to New York; however Dean has missed the golden opportunity of using the meeting of Karen Blixen and Marilyn Monroe, which took place with leading American authors like Arthur Miller, then married to Monroe.
Dean also choses to turn the pact between Blixen and Danish writer Thorkild Bjørnvig into a mass number of university students and teachers all wearing glasses . Surely more focus on the two participant in the pact would have made a better storyline.
Ida Praetorius develops her Karen Blixen from a naïve young woman to a strong fighter, who takes blow after blow from a cheating money-spending husband and the loss of not only the farm but also her friend/lover Denys Finch-Hatton, who died in an airplane accident. Soloist Alexander Bozinoff makes a likeable Finch-Hatton, but there is very little stage time for him to create a deeper impression.
There are many fine performances from Benjamin Buza as the suicidal father, the twin brothers Vitor de Menezes and Guilherme de Menezes as respectively the devil and Thorkild Bjørnvig etc. Luckily, the twins share no stage time, which would have been rather odd, considering their respective roles.
It is a beautiful ballet in many ways, high production values, Debussy music and strong dancers and dance actors. However, by not including Blixen´s literary achievements, the key brick is missing from the puzzle. Even an outstanding cast cannot compensate for it.
Photos by Henrik Stenberg Copyright(c) Royal Danish Ballet
- Gudrun Bojesen as Karen Blixen
- Marcin Kupinsky as Berkely Cole
- Karen Blixen with the literary group
- Ida Praetorius and Alexander Bozinoff as Karen Blixen and Denys Finch-Hatton
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