Gregory Dean:
“Blixen”
Royal Danish Ballet
The Old Stage
November 9, 2019
The Danish Author Karen Blixen died in 1962, aged 77. She was in her fifties before she started writing novels and short stories, so her legacy is relatively small. Never the less she is one of the most famous Danish authors on the international scene. She was mention as a possible Nobel Prize winner. However, she lost out to Ernest Hemingway.
As she wrote in English, having lived most of her adult years in Kenya, she attracted a big international group of readers. Karen Blixen was a larger than life person, who lived an interesting but also challenging life. Born in a wealthy family with close links to the aristocracy, many doors were open for her.
Her mother´s rich family invested big sums in the coffee farm she started in Kenya with her husband Bror Blixen-Finicke. In 1985, the film based on her biographical novel “Out of Africa” starring Merrill Streep, created a new buzz around Karen Blixen´s life and work.
Since then every second year, a new biography on Blixen and her relatives has been published. At present five new movie projects based on Karen Blixen, her family or writing are under development – and now one ballet.
Last year Nikolaj Hübbe, artistic director of The Royal Danish Ballet asked Principal Dancer and choreographer Gregory Dean, if he would create a ballet based on Blixen´s life.
Making ballet on real people is difficult enough in itself. Making ballet based on a writer´s life, primarily lived in Kenya many years ago is not an easy task. However, Gregory Dean accepted the brief.
In many ways, he delivers an outstanding ballet and a big scale production. He has teamed up with designer Jon Morrell, who over the last two years have bestowed two beautiful productions upon Royal Danish Ballet, Liam Scarlett´s “Queen of Spades” and Gregory Dean´s own “Cinderella”.
Morrell managed to create an outstanding set, which flawlessly moves from Denmark to Africa to New York. The costumes are lavish and beautiful. He also managed to find a way to make the RDB dancers appear as Africans, simply by shooting them in reverse lightning. An effective solution, but maybe overused a bit too much.
Early Loss
Gregory Dean starts his story in Karen Blixen´s childhood at the family home “Rungstedlund” bigger than a house, but smaller than an estate. Blixen and her siblings are thrilled when their father returns to the home.
However, tragedy strikes. Her father, officer and writer Wilhelm Dinesen hangs himself in the family home.
Here and throughout the ballet, Gregory Dean uses a character and tricks; I wished he had not brought into the ballet. He brings in the devil, who will reappear many times during the ballet.
Even though performed very well by the outstanding Jón Axel Fransson, it limits the character building and reduces the plots from real tragedy to medieval thinking.
Karen Blixen is of a generation where religious belief were questioned. She is of the generation who lived through the Great War and its horrors. Her father suicide was contributed to his war experiences and syphilis, not the devil himself.
However, Gregory Dean also makes a very good decision in bringing back retired RDB star and outstanding actor, Mads Blangstrup to the role of Wilhelm Dinesen. He also calls in several other retired dancers, who fills the role of grandmas´, aunts and eccentrics.
The plot then moves on to a great ball at Friisenborg, the estate of highbrow aristocratic relations of the Dinesen family. Here you get everything and more than expected of a great ball.
It is an engagement party for Karen´s relative Daisy, here a very joyous person and good friend, performed by Principal Holly Dorger. However, Daisy committed suicide some years later due to a drug addiction.
At the ball, Karen meets another cousin, Hans, whom she is in love with and his twin brother Bror who turns out to be a more willing suitor than his brother is, especially when he learns that Karen has access to a considerable fortune from her mothers´ rich family.
By the end of the party, the couple are engaged and set for making their fortune running a coffee plantation in Kenya.
Going South
There is a saying, “Are you happily married or do you live in Kenya?” referring to the lifestyle of the European, primarily British colonial society. That sentence also came true for Karen and Bror. Karen Blixen found herself suffering from - what was believed - syphilis early in the marriage.
She vent through mercury cures, which might have had some effects but also gave her life lasting complications. Although the couple stayed married for nine years, the lived separate and different life until divorcing in 1925.
The Blixen´s became part of high ex-patriots set based around Berkeley Cole. Karen also met Denys Finch-Hatton, a well-educated brit, who run safari tours. He and Karen Blixen became very close, maybe lovers (depending on which source you trust). He definitely had a strong part in her development as a writer.
Unfortunately, Gregory Dean is much more interested in Blixen´s life than in her writings. You could enjoy the ballet without discovering that she is a writer. In the ballet, she comes over much more as a society person. She hardly hold a pen, a book or touch a type machine in the ballet.
When Karen Blixen´s family backers decides to cut their loses and redraw the significant stream of money, Karen Blixen is hit hard. As Denys Finch-Hatton dies in an air-accident hits her as much and she returns sick and broken to the family home Rungstedlund in Denmark.
The Lady becomes a Writer
The ballet do not cover her brother, Thomas Dinesen´s agreement to finance her for a year, where she will write a book. Miracles of miracles, her first book “Seven Fantastic Tales” becomes an international hit followed by “Out of Africa”. In very short time, she becomes a national treasure in Denmark and an international celebrity considered for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Gregory Dean here focuses on two key points in the later phase of her life, her trip to America and her relationship with a young Danish writer Thorkild Bjørnvig, a leading light in the literary movement Heretica. Bjørnvig and Blixen makes a pact, where she will make him a great writer and he must follow her plans.
However, when Blixen becomes to domineering, and Bjørnvig falls in love with the wife of a close friend, the friendship turns in to a break. In 1974, Thorkild Bjørnvig publish his book “The Pact” covering his relationship with Karen Blixen.
Karen Blixen uses the conflict with Thorkild Bjørnvig as inspiration for no less than four novellas in her final work “Last Stories”. However, Gregory Dean chooses not to use these or other stories that includes personal material from Karen Blixen. Likewise, her visit in New York comes across more like a shopping trip than her meeting with literary hierarchy.
Taking on the Challenge
In all Gregory Dean managed to create a solid full evening ballet with many fine details and impressive dancing. However, by not focusing on Karen Blixen´s own writings and achievements, too much relevant material is overlooked. He loses too much, and also gives his star, Principal Kizzy Matiakis too little to work with.
Several years ago John Neumeier considered creating a ballet one of Karen Blixen´s shorter novels. Nothing came out of it. However, I would say that several of her stories could be good material for a ballet.
Gregory Dean shows that he can work on a big scale with a big cast. Together with conductor Martin Yates he finds that Claude Debussy' workscould function very well as a score for a full night ballet. However, by omitting Blixen´s literary legacy, he reduces the impact of the ballet.
Ballet is an art form without word. However, I do believe that several of Karen Blixen´s stories could work very well in a ballet format.
Gregory Dean has shown that he can create big scale ballets. I look forward to his next production. Hopefully, it could be on a subject or work of his own choosing.
Photos by Henrik Stenberg (c) Copyright Royal Danish Ballet
- Kizzy Matiakis and Gregory Dean as Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton
- Mads Blangstrup as Wilhelm Dinesen
- Marcin Kupinski as Berkeley Cole with Camilla Ruelykke Holst and Victoria Falck-Schmidt
- Karen Blixen with the Heretica group
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