© Per Morten Abrahamsen Royal Danish 'Ghosts' reviews 'Witness' reviews 'Les Bras de Mer' reviews Birkkjaer in reviews Staeger in reviews recent Royal Danish reviews more Jane Simpson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Alvin Ailey actually made Witness for the big stage in the Royal Theatre in 1986, but it looks good in the Takkelloft. The dark space is lit by around a hundred candles, arranged in banks round the dancing area; half a dozen plain wooden benches are the whole of the decor. It's a solo, inspired by and dedicated to the ballerina Mette Hønningen, who was called in to stage this revival, and who took a call at the end, looking enviably elegant. For the first time, the music is live: it's the spiritual My Soul is a Witness for my Lord (sung by Etta Cameron), and that - combined with Ailey's name - immediately sets our expectations of how it's going to be. There's something of a red-herring at the beginning, when the dancer, in a long white dress, sits on one of the benches in an instantly familiar pose - it's Martha Graham in Lamentations, intentionally or not, and for a time it's a bit distracting; but it soon becomes clear that this work is in a very different mood. Hønningen describes it in a programme note as being about a belief in life, about confronting the bad as well as good, the problems as well as the joys: the overall feeling is positive and it ends on an upbeat note. The two opening performances of Witness were danced by principal Marie-Pierre Greve, a dark delicate dancer whose sincerity was evident but not quite sufficient to bring the piece to life again.

The next work, Les Bras de Mer, makes its own decor as it goes along: it could be staged anywhere with much the same effect. It's about a couple in a long-term relationship, sorting out their feelings for each other, and it ends ambiguously, with the two of them at opposite sides of the stage, not quite sure if they're going to split up or try again. Not a particularly original story, but given a new treatment by the inclusion of a table and a chair which have nearly as big a share of the choreography as the dancers. It's a double metaphor: partly symbolising the way a long partnership gets cluttered up and weighed down with 'stuff', partly referring back to choreographer Petr Zuska's Czech background. In his language, he tells us, 'table' is a masculine word and 'chair' is feminine, so like the man and the woman they belong together but are different. It's a bit hard to take in and a bit hard on the dancers to spend quite so much of their time shifting furniture, but these particular dancers act their roles so well that the emotions still manage to come through. Danish RDB watchers worry that almost all of the company's principals are over 30, and though one sympathises with their worries about the future succession, it's really good too to see so many grown-ups on stage, portraying people who are way beyond adolescent first love. Jean-Lucien Massot danced both the performances I saw, with Silja Schandorff on the the first night and Caroline Cavallo the next day - all of them satisfyingly good.
 

Gudrun Bojesen and Silja Schandorff in Ghosts
© Per Morten Abrahamsen

Finally we had the programme's première, Kim Brandstrup's Ghosts, subtitled five studies in musical phrasing. I should say at once that because I'm writing a piece about Brandstrup elsewhere, I've talked to him about Ghosts at some length and have also been allowed to watch some of the early rehearsals, so I can't review it with any sort of objectivity: this is more a description than an assessment. The title refers to the way Brandstrup feels he's haunted by people and styles who've influenced his work, and he's also exploring his own long-term obsession with the phrasing of dance. He's chosen to do this in five short pieces, with no narrative and no apparent connection with each other beyond his stated themes. There's a cast of five: two of the company's most promising young men, Ulrik Birkkjaer and Alexander Staeger, dance together, and in a later section they join Schandorff in a trio which most people interpret as a mother being comforted by her two sons; Gudrun Bojesen and Thomas Lund close the ballet with a long and beautiful pas de deux, set to an aria by Vivaldi, and in the centre of the piece there's a brilliant solo for Lund, which looks to me like a cross between Harlequin and Ashton's Oberon. Steven Scott's lighting is a triumph, providing a different setting for each 'study' - a rainy garden for Schandorff, a floating blue room for the two young men - you entirely forget the limitations of this stage. In between the different sections we see the dancers warming up for the next bit: it's all done behind a gauze and when it's time for the music to start, Scott somehow makes them just disappear, before your very eyes. It's magical.