RDB ‘Kermesse’ reviews all ‘La Sylphide’ reviews more Royal Danish reviews RDB on the Web

I had no right to expect perfection, because the image in my head of what ballet might be like in virtual heaven, embodied on earth as the Royal Danish Ballet, was surely unachievable in ordinary reality.

But that wasn't the way it happened: I spent a week on a cloud and have come home wanting to understand why the Royal Danish Ballet can achieve near-perfection and we struggle to avoid embarrassment.

RDB in its Danish context...
Many of the conditions in which the Royal Danish Ballet operate are virtually identical to the ones our own companies face: there, as here, ballet is regarded as a curious art by most ordinary people, admired for the acknowledged skill and application of its professionals and respected as an educational tool for the development of young people-but still very firmly outside 'normal' life.

Here is one significant difference: I spoke to the parents of two children at the Royal Danish Ballet School and although they were concerned, as a British parent might be, about the utility of a career that might expire by the time their child reached 30 or 35, it was clear that they were proud that a member of their family was in the 'national service'. It would have been the same if one of their children had been accepted into the army: ballet in Denmark has the cachet of being a 'Royal' profession, one through which one serves the nation. We used to admire such things ourselves.

The respect in which Queen Margrethe is held by Danes is quite a shock to a British visitor: she is prized for her accessibility, for her straight-forwardness, for her dignity and friendliness and for her hard work. She designed the (very successful) sets and costumes for the Royal Danish Ballet's production of Et Folksagn in 1991 and has been a vigorous supporter of the company's efforts: during the Bournonville Festival she attended four performances in the week!

Denmark is a much smaller place than Britain. With a population of 5,200,000 (less than 10% of the population of Great Britain) and with around one million people living in Copenhagen, the economy is both more diverse and less complex, with greater convergence than we have become used to here in Britain about the value of state support across a range of economic and social matters. There is a smaller range of incomes between rich and poor and a greater number of people with 'average' incomes. Spending on leisure activities there amounts to 8.6% of disposable income in an 'average' household, whereas the equivalent figure for the UK is an extraordinary 15%.

Marketing RDB, marketing authentic art...
From inside the Royal Danish Ballet, the problems of marketing their product to their audience are very similar to ours: their 'customers' are interested in seeing things which are 'new' or 'special' in some way, and the hard-core of enthusiasts who are committed to the value of the company's heritage is relatively small. You can get an idea of the parallel if you imagine that our Royal Ballet were to perform the 1947 production of Sleeping Beauty year in, year out, on the grounds that it was the 'foundation piece' of the company and ought to be preserved for its own sake. Although the idea might draw a little sympathy, there would be more boredom and frustration after a few years than there is disquiet (however vocal or well-justified it might be at times) at the changes we have seen in various new productions. If you look at the 'market' as a whole-the sum of money to be squeezed from all the people whose continuing interest funds the continuing existence of the company-then variety and innovation are 'worth' more than purity.

At least, that is the perception inside most companies at the moment. It has rarely been challenged, and so far as I know it has only ever been based on assumptions and anecdotal perceptions, never on careful market research.

It is my belief that there is a serious market, one that can afford to pay the real cost, for high quality authentic performance-and my 'evidence' lies in the huge commercial success of the 'authentic' movement in classical music. When that began, with Arnold and Carl Dolmetsch, Alfred Deller and then in the 60s with David Munrow and his friends, few thought that these strange sounds could be more than a minority interest. But now there's a huge industry based on the popularity of this approach to performing. You can't point to any one particular composer or performer and say, 'Here's the personality that has caught the popular imagination', because the trend isn't rooted in the charismatic quality of an individual, or even a particular taste for one kind of music. The enthusiasm is for the experience of reality recaptured, for the promise in these performances of a momentary transport to another world, one from which modern life can be quietly if temporarily shelved.

The social phenomenon which has manifested itself in a shower of millennial museums, none of them likely to be financially viable on current form, is a warning that if we try to offer flashy bits of 'heritage' for their own sake, we may fail terribly. Bits and pieces are not the answer: it is the promise of a perfect passage of time that is the key.

Creating the great, performing the great...
We should remember, too, that dancers, like musicians, are the humble (but important) servants of their art and its creative spirits. It has only ever fallen to a few to be the vehicle upon which a new master work was created, not because there are only a few deserving of the privilege, but because being 'new' is intrinsically difficult. For the new piece to last, or to stand out sufficiently for the creative effort to seem worthwhile, it needs to touch its public. That, as we have often seen, can be a matter of only a short space: sheer virtuosity does attract attention; so too does sensation; vulgarity and much else besides.

But for a new piece to be credited with value, for it to last and to carry its creators' names with pride, it must have something worthwhile to say (which does not mean that it necessarily says something that hasn't been said before); it must be made and presented with the care its quality deserves; and above all it must say what it says in a way that has more weight, more transparency, more legibility for this particular time and audience than has been achieved before. It is the capacity of art to speak directly to its own audience, not through a veil of time or ignorance, but with immediacy and vitality, that makes it such a significant part of our life and of the lives, in turn, of each successive generation.

If the appeal of an older piece of art is greatest for us when it is allowed to carry us out of our own time so that we can experience its 'message' in its own world-or something as close to it as we can achieve-that explains why the intrusion of Russian acrobatics (the jester who spoils Act 1 of Kermessen i Brügge in the new production) jars so badly: it collapses our willing suspension of disbelief, our fantasy that we have travelled back in time, and reduces the performance to a temporal pot pourri.

The quality which makes a performer great, whether they're performing a work that's been created for them or something that's been performed a thousand times before, is that they capture our attention in a way that draws us into their space: we give up our rattling psyche and let them steer a course for our emotional and intellectual experience. When we hand control of our feelings-and especially when we feel that we are doing it at the same time as all the other people sitting in the theatre with us-the sense of corporate emotion is quite overwhelming. It is as if the ribbons with which Lise directs Colas' horse in La Fille mal Gardée have outriggers to the audiences' hearts, each tug pulling the beats in time with the music we feel together.

La Sylphide...
That sense of absolute communal emotion was just what I experienced in the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, at the performance of La Sylphide on 24 January. It wasn't just that the principals were on superb form, though they were: Silja Schandorff, Mads Blangstrup, Sorella Englund and Thomas Lund were all tremendously good. But the extraordinarily strong emotional power of the performance was rooted in and amplified by each contribution from the corps de ballet. As friends and companions in Act I they bustled and fidgeted in a way that Fokine would have admired, both for the individuality they succeeded in expressing and for the way it was never allowed to overpower the balance of the scene as a whole. Everything was toned down, held in check, lightly managed so that it set off the main action rather than distracting from it. In Act II the ladies of the corps were simply wonderful: they might have come from heaven with the spirit of Théophile Gaultier to inspire them. While Mads Blangstrup and Silja Schandorff were beautifully sensitive in embodying the egocentric James and his will-'o-the-wisp, and Thomas Lund was exemplary as Gurn, the sylphides transcended them: like a spiritous cloud, they were at once connected and disembodied. This was no 'coastguard' of white wallpaper for the principals: these dancers knew that their role was to take the events at the centre of the stage and to show them reflected, enlarged on a broader canvas. As we saw the gasping breaths of the expiring Sylph, her companions' arms were breathing with her, willing her to live and despairing at her fate. Their empathetic gestures built an emotional vortex which kept your eyes gripped by the centre, but continually widening to encompass the whole. If a single scene could encapsulate the experience of being drawn into the action, of feeling from the inside because of the artful manipulation of the whole, this death of the Sylph was it-and it moved me to tears.

RDB at school...
I wouldn't want to give the impression that the Royal Danish Ballet's superb form at the moment is just a product of sociological trends or culturally significant factors that arise outside the dance itself. On the contrary, the technical command of much of the company, and its strong rooting in the work of the Royal Danish Ballet School, were very much in evidence.

I was privileged to be allowed to attend class by the Principal of the School, Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter, and lucky indeed to be trusted to the care of Niels Balle and Margaret Mercier. Their classes for the older students were impressive in part simply because both were good, kind and articulate teachers: but they were also intriguing because different elements of technique were emphasised. Perhaps it was just coincidence, the consequence of only having a single morning's sample, but Niels Balle's class for the boys began with exercises for the flexibility of the feet incorporated into pliés and the other early barre exercises in a way that helped to explain where the beautiful control of leaping and landing, the characteristic Bournonville balloné, came from; Margaret Mercier's class for girls (of which I saw just the last part) included an exercise for changements which began as any such exercise might have done-but the music broke off in the middle of the sequence: it had been chosen to encourage listening, so that the effort to land with as little noise as possible might be promoted. In other words, it seemed clear that the Bournonville heritage's dominance in the Danish ballet goes way beyond the choice to use, or not, the characteristic port des bras, or a particular degree of extension in the arabesque: the finest qualities of Bournonville's legacy, rather than its stylistic details, are integrated into the training of the young dancers in a way that equips them to keep the best of the old way alive in their professional careers.

Far from stifling the spirit of the young dancers, the kindly discipline of this schooling seems to enhance their freedom to dance-but it is the integration of the children into the Bournonville repertoire where the closeness of the school to the company shows its greatest strength: their vitality and enthusiasm is harnessed as they learn another lesson, perhaps the most important of all, that the expressive power of the ballet comes from everyone's work together within the whole.

Jantelov's commandments...
That this subjugation of the individual's personality and skill to the whole should, in the end, seem the most significant lesson to be learned from the Danes was explained in part when I found out about the Jantelov from my Danish friend, Janne Zagrobelny.

Originating in a book by Aksel Sandemose published in 1933, En flygtning krydser sit spor, the lessons of survival in the small town of Jante where the author spent his childhood are enumerated. 1. Do not think you are something. 2. Do not think you are as much as us. 3. Do not think you are smarter than us. 4. Do not imagine that you are better than us 5. Do not believe that you know better than us. 6. Do not think you are more than us. 7. Do not think you are any good at anything. 8. Do not laugh at us. 9. Do not think that anyone cares about you 10. Do not think you can teach us anything.

These self-effacing commandments are the norm in Danish society, despite the pervasive influence of Anglo-Saxon culture through the dominance of American popular culture on tv and in the cinema. Where the Englishman or woman seeks to demonstrate that they are, quite clearly, special, the Dane will do the exact opposite, rejecting the claim of specialness (usually with some fairly brusque sarcasm) while entirely refusing to join competition at that level. It says something about their lack of interest in competitive things that the Danish press, very like our own in many ways (though better designed, on the whole) has far less sports coverage than the British press: during the week I was in Copenhagen they gave more space to angling than any other sport besides football, never mind ballet (which got as little coverage as it would here, despite the claims to attention of the Bournonville Festival).

Breathtaking excellence...
Translate that social culture to the dance, and you have the makings of the Royal Danish Ballet's greatest asset, and of one of their greatest problems. Without boasting, they maintain a standard of excellence in technical and artistic quality which is quite breathtaking. But they don't have the arrogant self-confidence of the English or Americans, so they don't sell their work for the living miracle it is.

In performance that means that the story in a narrative ballet-and it is the telling of the story that is the main driving force in most Bournonville ballets, just as it is in the Dickens novels with which they're contemporary-is given primacy. Everyone works to make their particular contribution, perhaps as a violinist or a 'singer' in Napoli, or as a distinctive troll in Folk Story, but no-one buys their place at the expense of the whole. That means that the emotional weight of the company scenes is hugely enhanced: the crowd of kids and older folk on the bridge in the last act of Napoli works because you feel that the soloists really are displaying their dancing prowess to a community of equals and friends, not just showing off to a paying audience.

When, as in Dickens, the point of the narrative screw is to heighten the emotional quality of the drama, the impact of the company's delight in being together is at its most powerful. This corps de ballet look perfect, not because every leg or arm is exactly in place, but because the flow of movement is managed in a way that makes every detail look like a natural part of the whole. The combination of the Jantelov's self-effacement and the company's technical standards produces a near-perfect result.

The wider problem that arises from this national character is that although the company's managers recognise the special status of their company in the world of ballet, the Danes do not, on the whole, understand quite how important their ballet company and its repertoire are. In cultural terms, they are straightforwardly a 'world heritage site', a cultural resource of such overwhelming quality and significance that we must find a way to ensure their prosperity and the survival of this unique expression of the human spirit in dance. Perhaps a little Anglo-Saxon marketing skill could be employed to advance their international standing and support?

Of course, it would be absurd to suggest that these performances, a week's worth of Bournonville Festival, were so completely perfect that their like could never be achieved again.

Kermessen i Brugge...
The jester in Kermessen i Brügge wasn't the only modern intrusion: Dinna Bjørn, the choreographer responsible for much of the excellent restoration and patching, was kind enough to explain (with the author Erik Aschengreen generously spending a great deal of time talking to the group of English speakers who had attended their lecture-demonstration on 29 January) the problems of satisfying the demands of the contemporary audience while filling gaps in the tradition. Though this round of revivals has (quite properly) emphasised and reinstated a number of mime scenes, notably-and to the ballet's huge advantage-in the new production of Kermessen i Brügge, the Blue Grotto scene of Napoli was less successful. Though the second performance I saw was tighter and neater, the curse of water ballet (of which Swan Lake's première is the most famous victim) seemed to be upon the naiads and tritons. The latter looked simply embarrassed by their costumes (like their choreography, reminiscent of Balanchine's Prodigal Son and quite out of style for the ballet as a whole: Bournonville's contemporaries would have been horrified by the exposed flesh!)-and the act was, in all, the best evidence I saw that a more 'authentic' approach would have brought better results. It would be unfair to complain, and I wouldn't want to do that-but I hope I've explained why pastiche might produce a stronger whole in the next production of Napoli.

Wrap-up...
The orchestra's playing veered wildly over the week between the excellent and the execrable, but, despite a few little accidents, almost all the dancing was very good or better. Only one of the principals was disappointing: an American called Caroline Cavallo of exceptional beauty and grace but unfortunately blessed with no ear for music at all. She managed to land off the beat most of the time, never consistently enough to suggest interpretative intent but with a foxy irregularity that may have explained why Johan Kobborg looked disconcerted and out of sorts when he danced with her. On the other hand, how many companies enjoy such sublime artistry as that of the extraordinary Kirsten Simone and Thomas Lund?

I came away from Copenhagen feeling blessed to have experienced ballet so close to my ideal, so nearly the stuff of my dreams. If this was, as I've been told, just a modest little Bournonville Festival, I can only look forward to the next, bigger one planned for 2005. For while there are many forms of excellence in as many different forms of dance, on this form, in this repertoire, the Royal Danish Ballet is quite simply the best ballet company in the world.