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La Sylphide had the same cast in the leading roles as I saw earlier, and a nice performance of Gurn by Nicolai Hansen, replacing the advertised Alexander Stæger. Christina L. Olsen, who danced the First Sylphide, has made her own debut as the Sylph this season - she's a rather different physical type from the traditional Bournonville dancer and I hope I'll be able to catch her interpretation soon. (La Sylphide has been announced for the 2007/8 repertory as well, but with a different opening ballet.) Silja Schandorff repeated her very simple, and very touching, Sylph - the only thing that went wrong was that both her wings fell off far too soon, long before James's deathly embrace. She was totally unfazed. Last time, I saw Kristoffer Sakurai's house debut as James - he's been sharing the role with Mads Blangstrup through the rest of the run, and it was good to see how much his acting has improved. He now seems properly engaged in the action and is finding some real passion for the second act.

The Lesson had Morten Eggert as the Teacher: he always looks interesting, whatever he's doing, but I've never managed to catch him in a big role before. I've come to think of him as a bit 'edgy', so I was surprised to find that his interpretation was actually much the most low-key of all those I've seen recently either here or at Covent Garden. True, he's the only one who's actually managed to break one of the chairs when he throws them around, but apart from that most of his behaviour was on the twitchy side of normal rather than frighteningly disturbed. It works rather well, and one of the side-effects is that the whole thing looks a lot more 'dancey', more like a ballet than it sometimes does. The downside is that in the end he seems to kill the girl almost casually - not exactly by mistake, but as if it wasn't all that big a deal: but when you think of it, that maybe makes it all the more sinister, especially when the door bell rings and you see the next victim eagerly waiting.
 

The Pupil in this cast is Izabela Sokolowska, one of several Polish dancers who joined the company about five years ago. (She's a Varna Gold Medallist, and was promoted to soloist during the 2005 Bournonville Festival.) She's very different from her alternate in the role this season, Gudrun Bøjesen: more sophisticated, more conscious of the effect she may be making - but somehow she just missed the impact of the decisive moment when she hurts her foot, so that if I didn't know the story I might well have missed what was happening. She's a good match for Eggert, though. Gitte Lindstrøm repeated her excellent interpretation of the Pianist to complete a fine performance.