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Conversation with Henning Kronstam [Note: This article has been divided into three parts to make it easier to read. It begins with a biographical introduction to Kronstam, and a preliminary conversation about dancing the Poet in Balanchine's La Sonnambula, Kronstam's first big role, which he danced four months before creating Romeo.] [To skip immediately to the Romeo part, click here.] Henning Kronstam is probably best known to American balletgoers for creating the role of Romeo in Sir Frederick Ashton's Romeo and Juliet, choreographed for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1955. Romeo made him a star at twenty and was the beginning of a brilliant career. Kronstam dominated the Royal Danish Ballet's repertory for more than two decades, dancing over 120 roles, more than a third of which were created. He worked with virtually every choreographer of importance active at mid-century from Massine, who gave him his first small solo (the Street Sweeper in Le Beau Danube) when he was fourteen, to Eliot Feld and Murray Louis, who made roles for him in the mid-70s. Kronstam's beauty and lyricism could have doomed him to a lifetime of playing Poets and Young Lovers, but he sought both technical and dramatic challenges throughout his career and his range is unparalleled. Kronstam was known for the purity and elegance of his classical dancing, but he was above all an actor-dancer. In his character parts, he was unrecognizable from role to role, transforming himself from Prince to madman to simpleton to brute and back to Prince again in a single week's repertory and bringing a gallery of characters to life on the stage. Kronstam succeeded Flemming Flindt as ballet master of the Royal Danish Ballet in 1978 and was responsible for the planning and direction of the 1979 Bournonville Festival as well as for restoring Bournonville, and classical ballet generally, to the center of the company's repertory. He is a noted teacher and coach; Arne Villumsen, Ib Andersen, Lis Jeppesen, Heidi Ryom, Nikolaj Hübbe, Alexander Kølpin, Lloyd Riggins, Rose Gad and Silja Schandorff are among the dancers who credit Kronstam with being of seminal importance in their development. After retiring as balletmaster in 1985, Kronstam continued to produce or rehearse the lion's share of the repertory, at first concentrating on the classical and contemporary dramatic ballets. Unlike most ballet stars, his productions are not about his own ego. Rather, they are like his dancing: elegant, subtle, richly textured, and, above all, musical. Instead of showing how clever he can be by imposing his ideas on a ballet, he serves the work, and he brings out the best in every ballet and the best in every dancer. On the death in 1988 of the RDB's celebrated Bournonville producer, Hans Brenaa, Kronstam (who had learned his Bournonville roles from Brenaa, and had rehearsed La Sylphide and other works) began to stage Bournonville ballets as well. It was his stagings of La Sylphide, Conservatoriet, and Napoli which were the universally admired productions at the II Bournonville Festival in 1992 and on the company's subsequent U.S. tour. Those who feared that that the Bournonville repertory had been endangered by Brenaa's death began to look to Kronstam to ensure the survival of that repertory. However, around the time of the festival Kronstam knew, "from some things that were done and said that the next year [1992-93] would be my last season at the Theatre. I knew that Romeo and Juliet would be my last production. I thought, I started with Romeo and Juliet, so it would be good to finish with Romeo and Juliet," In April of 1993, Kronstam was offered only a three-month contract for the 1993-94 season, a contract which he did not accept. Like Brenaa's, Kronstam's productions have a vitality, wealth of detail, and sheer stagecraft that the company's other productions do not. He is the last of a short line of twentieth century producers, beginning with Hans Beck, who have understood both the complexity and the simplicity of Bournonville's ballets and can make them live on stage without altering their essential nature, and with his departure from the Royal Theatre, the spine of whatever intangible artistic sensibility that we non-Danes like to think of as Danish has been severed. In January 1994, I spent two weeks in Copenhagen talking to Kronstam for a book about his career. We started with three roles which came to him when he was in his early twenties and which were of major importance in his development as an artist: Balanchine's Apollo and the Poet in La Sonnambula, and Ashton's Romeo. What follows is a condensation of several interview sessions in which Kronstam spoke of these ballets and of working with Ashton and Balanchine. [Only the first two-thirds of the article, regarding La Sonnambula and working with Ashton are reproduced here.] [Note: the photo of Henning Kronstam with Mona Vangsaa, is by Arnold Eagle, and was taken from the Royal Danish Ballet's souvenir book of its 1956 American tour.] DanceView: Your first leading role was the Poet in George Balanchine's La Sonnambula. Had you seen the ballet before it was in the repertory? Kronstam: It was danced in Copenhagen by the DeCuevas Company, where John Taras was ballet master at that time. Taras was doing the Baron himself, George Skibine was doing the Poet, Marjorie Tallchief was doing the Sleepwalker, and Jocelyn Vollmar was doing the Coquette. And right away, Niels Bjorn [Larsen], who was the chief at that time, thought that that was a ballet for us, and talked to Taras about it. And Taras came, he came into the class, and he said [pointing]: "That one." Q: I would think it would be a difficult role for a young dancer. Kronstam: Yes, because he has very little to dance. He is just standing there, all alone on the stage when the guests leave, and with the focus of 1400 people [the size of Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, Old stage] on him. So there I think I learned what it meant to fill the stage. And it was a role that was so close to my personality at that time. Q: So in that way, it was easy to do? Kronstam: Yes. He's a fragile person, you know. He's easily conquered by the Coquette, and when he sees the Sleepwalker, it's a soul that he has a contact with. She is so serene and so light, after all of the noise of that party. And he doesn't understand why he has to die for it, because there are so many beautiful things he could write. These are all things that John said to me a long time ago, in 1955: "You have to think, in the last minute, of all the beautiful things you would have said to the world before you just-stumble over." Q: I'd never thought that the Sleepwalker is somebody who's serene. I've usually seen it done as this mad woman who's been locked in the tower. Kronstam: No, no. She's kept there because she is his daughter, or a virgin bride, or something like that. She's never been let out, and has never been to parties. She is always closed in. Her whole desire is to meet other people. And to him [the Poet], she is the dream of his poetic writing, or his painting, or whatever he is. The first one, the Coquette, she is human life. You can paint her like this: boom, boom, boom, boom, and there she is. But the Sleepwalker is indescribable for him, and he cannot get in touch with her. It's a much bigger drama than where they just play with it, and say, "Oh, well. She can't see. Take the light up and down," you know. Much bigger. And of course, the Coquette is very important too. All the girls who get the Coquette say, "Oh, do I have to do that one? Why don't I get the Sleepwalker?" And she is so important, because she is building up the drama. The Coquette has to have a coolness about her. Because sometimes it's done like: "Well, tonight, I am just one of those whores. Kiss my hand." She is happy for his [the Baron's] big house, his big parties. She is happy for all the jewels she gets, and everything else. But she doesn't have him as a husband, because that one is up there in the tower. The Baron is an old man, and she sees a young, handsome man, and he is different, and that is what attracts her. Then, of course, if she can get him by her seductiveness-you know, maybe she doesn't even want him, but she wants to try it. Q: Why is the Poet there? Did someone invite him? Kronstam: Maybe somebody in the party invited him, and he doesn't know anybody. So when he comes in, he just looks around, and somebody is coming to say hello, and he doesn't know what to do. And then he sees a very beautiful woman, and she seems like she wants to talk to him. And that's what gets the interest there. Of course, she goes further and she tries to seduce him. But she is not heartbroken when she is taken out by the Baron. And then he just stands there and says, "Well, what was this?" Until he hears that SCREAM from the tower—and that's in the music. And it should be seen on his back that something has happened before he starts his walk back. It should be like, like somebody has—well, caught him, or something like that. And it is her spirit, which is a spirit that works with his—yin and yang. That's what it is. Q: In the pas de deux, he is trying to reach her? Kronstam: It's to wake her up, to get through to her. And she is just impossible. He gets more and more desperate, and not more and more playful—which I saw Lloyd [Riggins] do one evening. I went to him and I gave him such a hell. He was laughing at the part when she puts her leg out, and then he puts one arm, and then the other arm [on the ground in front of her leg to stop her]. He laughed over her, like it's fun, it's a fun play. I said, "Lloyd, this is not fun. You are trying to stop her. It's like Giselle. You want to get to this person. You want to understand. You want to talk to her." "Oh, I never thought about it like that," he said. I said, "Well, please do." Q: I asked you previously if they ever laughed in Denmark, and you seemed shocked at the idea. But in New York, every time I've seen it, the audience laughs at that part Kronstam: I have to think about it, if they ever laughed when I did it. No, they didn't. They didn't. Because it was a fight to get her to wake up. It's a beautiful role. Q: Did you keep finding new things in it? Kronstam: You don't find new things in the ballets. You find new things in yourself, because it's yourself that changes. Sonnambula I did for twenty years. Then you really get into the role, and you really know what it's all about. But now, with five performances, maybe with two casts, I think it's mad. The audience gets cheated and the dancers get cheated, because they never get the feeling of owning the roles. Q: How were your Sleepwalkers different? Kronstam: Well, [Margrethe] Schanne had an enormous stage effect, and she was in the long, long skirt, so you didn't see the bulky legs. And she was strong on pointe. She was always extraordinary. Anna [Laerkesen] was this mysterious person that you couldn't get in touch with. The big shock with Anna was when she carried me out. Q: Because she's tiny? Kronstam: Not that she's strong, no, but because nobody believed that she liked me. With Schanne and with Kirsten [Simone], there's something that touches me, there's something, there's something. But with Anna, there was absolutely nothing, until she just turned around and said, "Come." And walked out. Kirsten was, of course, beautiful as ever, with that long blonde hair. She didn't have a big success at the beginning because she didn't have the role in her, but she got fine in it. She was twenty at that time, like I was, so she didn't get a proper chance before later. Q: In keeping a role like the Poet alive for so long, is he always the same age that you are, or do you try to keep him young? Kronstam: I always played him out of myself. If I had to do one of those roles, then early from the morning when I woke up I was starting that role, from the morning. I could rehearse other things during the day, but I could not learn new things. So I was that person all day. That was Romeo, that was Siegfried, that was Albrecht. I could rehearse, I could learn new steps and things like that, but I couldn't concentrate, because in the back of my head was turning the role for the evening. Q: Did Taras stage anything else for the company when he was there? Kronstam: He taught Mona Vangsaa, Kirsten Simone, and me the Balanchine Paquita pas de trois. We used it on tours. It was fun to do. It has such nice steps in it. There were some very difficult things, too. Those croisé jetés, and entrechat sixes, and double pirouettes, and from one leg, sauté down and another pirouette—you know, they were a hell of a job to go through. It was like the classroom, and we had a good time doing it. [Go to Part 2] first published
in DanceView
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