Jane S

The RDB recently had a special evening - subscribers only, I think - to celebrate the careers of both Kizzy Matiakis and Amy Watson (who also retires this season). Danish critic Erik Aschengreen talks to the two ballerinas and shows lots of clips of their dancing - the oldest one shows Matiakis dancing the Lilac Fairy's variation when she was about 12. It's a charming programme and is now online - it lasts for 90 mins. The introduction (a couple of minutes) is in Danisn but all the rest is in English. Also, Eva Kistrup has just posted an appreciation of Kizzy Matiakis, on the day of her last performance.

A Wedding Bouquet (from the Vic-Wells Asssociation Silent Rehearsals - link borrowed from Alastair Macaulay's Twitter page)

The RDB has just announced that they will be streaming the new production from November 25th. That's the last night of the live run but it's not entirely clear (to me) if it's that performance they will be showing. I would guess it will be geoblocked, though.

Also there's now a trailer on the Danish page - looks very traditional so far!

Lots of photographs now added, but so far only on the Danish page.

Yes, the casting is announced. The three Sylph/James couples (all of them making house debuts, I believe) are Ida Praetorius/Jon Axel Fransson Wilma Giglio/Andreas Kaas Caroline Baldwin/Jonathan Chmelensky and Kizzy Matiakis (who gives her farewell performance on November 14th) and Esther Lee Wilkinson share the role of Madge. To see the night-by-night casting, go to this page and scroll down to the photos of the leading dancers; click on the little box saying ALLE DAGE and click on any of the list of dates that appears.

... a little earlier than planned: she was going to give her farewell performance with the RDB in the spring, in the leading role she created in Gregory Dean's Blixen - but it's now announced that she is pregnant and will instead make her last appearance on November 14th, as Madge in the new production of La Sylphide. There's a nice appreciation of her on the RDB site - it's in Danish but reponds well to Google translate.

At last, Tobias Praetorius was promoted to soloist this morning - during one of the company's Brunch and Ballet mornings where they do class on stage for an audience. See it here That's the second promotion this week, following Camilla Ruellykke Holst's - also to soloist - after company class a couple of days ago. And tonight their season opens, with Twyla Tharp's Come Fly Away... all fingers crossed for them.

The ROH Collections lists the additions in the current production as: Choreographer: Frederick Ashton Act II: Aurora's Variation, The Prince's Variation; Act II: Florestan and his Sisters (after Marius Petipa) Choreographer: Anthony Dowell Prologue: Carabosse and Rats; Act III: Polonaise and Mazurka (assisted by Christopher Carr) Choreographer: Christopher Wheeldon Act I: Garland Dance

Good news - the RDB has added Rubies to their streaming list Bad news - they appear to have put a geoblock on their entire streaming collection. Let's hope it's temporary - please post if you can still see any of their items outside Denmark!

Not even dance - partly to show the sort of thing the Danish Royal Theatres are doing but mostly for the first few seconds, which may bring back happy memories for anyone who's left a bit of their heart in Copenhagen. https://kglteater.dk/xtra/digital-scenekunst/kgl-i-det-fri/?section=33178

The company has just announced that John Neumeier's Mahler's 3rd Symphony will replace La Bayadere next season, opening on May 19th 2021. It was due to have its Danish premiere in March this year, and was lost to the lockdown with only 2 days to go till the first night, to the huge disappointment of the dancers, who clearly had a lot invested in it.

And now its Giselle - a recent production by Hubbe and Schandorff, with Ida Praetorius and Andreas Kaas in the leads, Kizzy Matiakis as Myrthe and Sebastian Haynes as Hilarion

The Opera House in Copenhagen reopened on Sunday with a concert featuring the entire orchestra and a choir - it was filmed so you can see here what the arrangements look like. The stage is extended well into the stalls seating area and there is room behind the orchestra for the choir and soloists. For the audience, alternate seats in every row are cordoned off. There was no interval. On the same page there's a video showing Kasper Holten (the Theatre Chief) explaining how it's going to be - in very fast Danish but you can see the audience arriving and the cafe. There's a page somewhere with the rules and restrictions - chiefly saying that you must arrive early as the rows will be 'boarded' from the centre outwards so that no-one has to push past already seated people - easier there than at Covent Garden as there is only one block in the stalls - odds and evens are on different sides so the seat numbers go 47 45 43 ..........................5 3 1 2 4 6 ............................44 46 48 The audeince seems enthusiastic and there's a standing ovation at the end - I guess that will happen everywhere at the first post-closure performance, Would you go with an arrangement like that?

Alison, the DTH Coliseum season which included this Giselle also showed Balanchine's Serenade, Four Temperaments (with a young Joseph Cipolla showing 'immense promise'), and Square Dance (with a caller) and Petipa's pas de dix from Raymonda (on the same bill as Giselle). John Percival said "I think I have seen nothing more beautiful or exciting on any London stage this year than Serenade as danced by the Harlem company"' but he was less enthusiastic about the Petipa. I enjoyed the Giselle film very much - the main disappointment for me was that the restricted studio space meant we couldn't see the magnificent Lorraine Graves in full cry!

I haven't watched it all the way through yet, Bruce, but someone on another site has also noticed the same problem - so not your computer's fault!

Also new today, the Royal Danish Ballet in Balanchine's Emeralds - until June 19th only.

Today's streaming release from the RDB is Balanchine's Emeralds. Although they performed the whole of Jewels, this is the only piece they have been given permission to show, and unlike the rest of the company's offerings it is only available until June 19th. It is an internal archive film not made for public release. Lots of extra features about it. and a cast list, on the same page

Well I wouldn't mind if I never saw Acts 1 and 3 again so maybe there's a deal to be done?

The DTH Facebook page says that the Giselle will be available until 11.59 pm on June 7th - so that's all day Sunday 7th in the UK?

Dance Theatre of Harlem announce an on-demand series, starting with their famous 'Creole' Giselle - some background features to start with and then the full ballet on Sat 6th June. This really is a 'must see' production!

Some great photos here!

Don''t know if this has already been noted

This is my review from the first performances of this production in 2011. The remarks about the dancing are no longer of relevance but I left most of them in as I thought it might give some idea of performance tradition. _______________________________________________________ At the last Bournonville Festival in 2005, A Folk Tale was billed as 'an enchanting comedy of mistaken identity' - a description which might apply very well to Coppelia, say, but which ignores the darker side of this strange, unique masterpiece. One of the aims of Nikolai Hubbe's new production is to restore the balance: traditionalists and historians may wish he'd done it by reverting to an earlier version, but there simply aren't enough traditionalists and historians to fill the big Opera House night after night, and Hu;bbe needs something that can hold its place in the regular repertoire rather than being brought out as an occasional treat. Compromise was inevitable, and the price of opening the ballet up to fit its new home and widen its appeal is the loss of some of its particularity and power. But let's be clear what's happening here. Hübbe is not throwing away a hallowed staging which goes back to the original in 1854: the version he's replacing is only twenty years old and was itself the fourth new production in 40 years; and with its brightly coloured, picture-book décor by Queen Margrethe it came in for some strong criticism of its own. Nor, so far as I know, has Hübbe cut one single step which could possibly be attributed to Bournonville. He's added a few new bits, to music borrowed from other works by the ballet's two composers, and he's changed some of the stage business and some of the mime; and more importantly than any of these, he's changed the period in which the story happens. A Folk Tale is about the conflict between normal everyday existence and the sinister underworld where the trolls and the elf-maidens live; the plot involves changeling girls and a young hero who falls in love with one of them whilst being engaged to marry the other. The original version turns on the moment when the girl stolen by the trolls encounters Christianity in a dream: but Hübbe, whose humanist leanings we've already seen at work in Napoli, has moved the action forward three hundred years or so to the later part of the nineteenth century - 'God is dead', and the girl dreams instead of the handsome young man she's briefly met in the forest. Freud is starting work around now, too, and Hübbe and his dramaturg, Ole Nørlyng, are keen on the theory that the trolls represent the unconscious dark side of the human characters. Of course they're not the first to have thought of that, but perhaps the idea hasn't been spelt out so clearly before. The programme notes go beyond the general to suggesting relationships between particular human/troll pairs - understandable in the case of the changelings (serene young lady and volatile troll), much more difficult to justify in other instances. It may seem strange to find trolls still around at all as late as the 1880s - in the original version they leave for Norway for ever at the end of the piece - but part of Hübbe's thesis is that they never left Denmark and indeed are still there, as 'we can't do without them'. (And as the hero, Junker Ove, is presented as a bookish young man - a budding scientist, perhaps - for whom there are no certainties, perhaps he sees trolls and elf-girls as just some of the odder by-products of evolution.) A big troll wedding party forms most of the second act, and I was disappointed that designer Mia Stensgaard (who did the RDB's Manon) chose to present the many guests as the sort of freaks - a headless giant, and so on - who wouldn't frighten anyone over the age of 4. Her elf-maidens are a lot more scary, especially after you discover that what distinguishes these wraiths from wilis, dryads etc is that every one of them has a jagged hole in the middle of her back. Stensgaard borrows inspiration for her 'real life' interiors from the famously cool paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi, and the trolls' hall is a huge, appropriately distorted and deconstructed version, brilliantly lit by Mikki Kunttu. One of the first things one learns about A Folk Tale] is that the hero was originally a true danseur noble role - 'walk and stand', with no actual dancing at all. That's been gradually eroded over the years, and with this production it disappears completely, as Junker Ove now has a big solo in the first act. It doesn't work for me, not because it's nothing like Bournonville - I'd rather have something totally different than a poor pastiche - but because it's too like countless other solos we've seen for young nobles yearning for their romantic ideal in the woods at night. It's part of the reason the ballet seems less Danish than it did before. It also affects the casting, which now goes to a couple of jeunes premiers who handle it well but might not yet have the gravitas needed for the non-dancing version. Marcin Kupinski, the first cast, looks good and has the technique he needs - his characterisation is still somewhat generic but he has plenty of time to find a more individual approach. Meanwhile he was rewarded by an on-stage promotion to solodanser (principal) at the end of the first night. (The Danes do that sort of thing really well.) At the next performance Ulrik Birkkjær really surprised me by how much his acting has improved: he seems to have learnt to use his eyes, especially, to excellent effect. The stolen heiress, Hilda, is one of those apparently very simple roles which must be really difficult to get just right. She has to be the embodiment of innocence and virtue but with enough spirit to plot her escape from the trolls when they try to force her into marrying the evil Diderik. Susanne Grinder is sweet but almost too self-effacing, Hilary Guswiler (still in the corps de ballet and a real hope for the future) shows a stronger character. Both of them have to fight to assert themselves against the very strong competition from Kizzy Matiakis and Maria Bernholdt, respectively, as the scandalously indecorous Miss Birthe, the changeling troll-girl unable to stop her true nature bursting through the conventional society she's been abandoned to. (The new time frame, incidentally, opens up an obvious feminist interpretation of her plight, not so clearly apparent in the medieval setting.) She ends up in a hastily arranged marriage with Sir Mogens, very dashingly played by Mads Blangstrup on the first night. But that leads on, through (... plot details too complicated to transcribe ...) to what for me is the one really bad mistake of the production. Birthe has aspirations to be a dancer and bursts into the middle of Bournonville's lovely pas de sept with a brash new solo; worse, as the other dancers make their sweetly unassuming bow at the end, hand in hand, she pushes through the line for a big curtsy with lots of comic flourishes. It gets a laugh, true, but it's a horribly bathetic intrusion and spoils the whole atmosphere. If she must have a solo, let her do it before the pas de sept starts; and maybe if she then watches the others she will learn enough grace from them to keep out of the way at the end. The 'real' pas de sept dancers on the first night were a fine team - if I had to pick my favourites they would be Nikolaj Hansen, for his fluid stylishness, and Diana Cuni, for her amazing speed and attack. From a rather more mixed cast the next day I very much liked Alexandra lo Sardo and the always interesting Lena-Maria Gruber. Oh, and Alban Lendorf. That leaves the trolls. Morton Eggert was a powerful Muri, mistress of the troll-hall and mother of Hilda's rival suitors, Diderik and the good-natured Viderik. He could lose the over-exaggerated limp, though, and still dominate. Lis Jeppesen's Viderik was one of the star-turns of the last production, very sweet but steering dangerously close to cute. She seems to have changed very little for the new staging - just a little less sentimental, perhaps, but amusing all the same. Thomas Lund goes instead for a quieter interpretation - he's a nice troll rather than a dancer doing a big number. He's really touching in the scene where he has to watch Hilda, his unattainable love, finding happiness in a long (and new)romantic pas de deux with Ove: the dark night of his soul, if a troll had a soul. So that's the profits and losses balance sheet: the bottom line, should you go? If you've never seen A Folk Tale] before, yes, definitely – it's fun and you'll see some fine performances. If you have particularly fond memories of a production before the last one, yes, probably - there are lots of good things in it - but prepare yourself for a very different experience.

I think it's been filmed for television several times but nothing has ever been released on tape or DVD so far as I know. Queen Margrethe designed a production in 1991 which many liked but some still preferred an earlier version