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The Ashton Archive

A Conversation with Henning Kronstam, Part 2
Working with Ashton on Romeo and Juliet'
by Alexandra Tomalonis
© 2003

[Note:  For an introduction and less abrupt beginning to this interview, go back to Part One.]

Henning Kronstam:  And then after Sonnambula, three weeks later, out of the clear blue sky, on the wall [where cast lists and rehearsal schedules are posted]: Romeo and Juliet. Romeo: Henning Kronstam.

Q: And that was completely a shock? You had no dreams?

Kronstam: He [Frederick Ashton] came in on that Saturday, he looked at the class, he left. He didn't say anything. Then on Sunday, the rest of the soloists who had been on tour with Inge Sand in Arhus were called in to do class so they could have the same opportunity. And he chose Mona [Vangsaa] for Juliet and Frank [Schaufuss] for Mercutio—and there's a little scandal that comes out here.

Q: What is that?

Kronstam: Well, Mona and Frank had been the leads in Birger Bartholin's Romeo and Juliet that we had had a few years before. Frank was a tall, beautiful man, and he was the right age for his wife, and he expected to do Romeo. So he was disappointed. But Ashton told him, "You don't know what I have in mind for you." Ashton had a very definite idea about Frank as Mercutio, and it was a beautiful role. He looked marvelous, and he had a death scene that was amazingly good. But. . .

Q: But he wasn't happy?

Kronstam: Oh, I think he ended up happy, because we had a great success, and Mona was happy with me, and—it went ["it went" was a favorite understatement of Vera Volkova].

Q: I've read that Ashton was afraid people would be upset that he had not given Juliet to Margrethe Schanne.

Kronstam: He was always nervous. First of all, the dressmaker wouldn't make Mona's dresses. He would have nothing to do with it, because it wasn't Margrethe. So we had to find another one, who did a beautiful job. But Margrethe Schanne didn't have the line. She didn't have the feet, and she could never have done it. Because she looks much better today, when she is seventy-four, than she did at that time.

Q: She's beautiful today.

Kronstam: She's beautiful. She's so serene.

Q: Yes. So Ashton chose you for Romeo.

Kronstam: Yes. Now, I said yesterday he was in love with me. He wasn't in love with me, but he was fascinated by me and by the things that he could get out of me.

Q: Well, he wasn't used to good male dancers.

Kronstam: No. You know, we went to Edinburgh with it the next year, in the fall of '55, and they said the strongest male dancing that they had seen from Ashton was the pas de trois in Romeo and Juliet for the three male principals. And Hurok said if he'd known this ballet, he would have engaged us for three months on Broadway.

Q: Did you know anything about Ashton before he came?

Kronstam: We knew a little. I'd read that he had done ballets for Margot Fonteyn in London, and bits and pieces, but we didn't know much, really. Vera [Volkova] knew him, because he had been working in her class. He couldn't work in Ninette De Valois's class because she was too strict, but Vera always said if there's any possibility that anybody has choreographic talent, let them do their own little businesses, as long as they don't disturb the class. And Fred was there in the back, doing his stuff, whatever he liked to do.
And so he started working, and he was very sensitive. He was not so much interested in the brilliance of the dancing. In that triple dance for the three boys, he wanted to show me off in what I could do the best. He made that dance for the nine men with Kjeld Noack in the middle. Otherwise, the ballet was more lyrical. It was like one long pas de deux all the way through. You didn't follow so much the tragedy of the two families fighting and all of that business. You followed the tragedy of two young lovers who couldn't get out to have each other. I danced it a lot. I danced it for ten years, first with Mona, then with Kirsten Bundgaard, then with Anna Laerkesen, and finally with Kirsten Simone. Erik [Bruhn] did about four performances of it and said, "I won't touch it."

Q: Why?

Kronstam: Well, he didn't feel at home in it because it wasn't made on him. And he had only two weeks rehearsal, and not with Ashton. And, you know, he'd seen me in it, and—you've read his book?

Q: Yes.

Kronstam: I don't know if he sat down and read Romeo and Juliet and found words to use—because that's what I have done for all of my dramatic roles. Cyrano, and The Lesson, and Romeo and Juliet and everything. Sat down and read to find out, "This is a word I can use here," and "This is a word I can use there." That makes movement sense. Because if you do that, then you have something to think in your mind when you're on stage so you don't look blank. Maybe Erik was thinking too much of his presence. I don't know what. He was wonderful, and he was a lovable person, and we ended up being very good friends. We were, of course, competitors, but we ended up being very good friends.

Q: I remember him saying something like, "Ashton said if he had done it on me, it would have been very different."

Kronstam: It would have been, because Erik had a more strict way of dancing than I had. I was more melting into it, you know.

Q: More flow.

Kronstam: More flow to it. Which Ashton liked.

Q: Did you already have that musical and fluid quality, or did he develop it more?

Kronstam: Well, Fred used all my qualities, as he has done with everybody. That's why there are so many arabesques in Romeo and Juliet, because Mona was best in arabesques. I remember he said at one rehearsal, "Can't you show me something other than an arabesque?"

Q: One of the things that you read about Ashton is that he will come in and say, "Do something, dear," and you do something, and that becomes your variation. Did he do that with you?

Kronstam: The pas de trois was very definite. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. Exactly. And with me—well, no. Because it was all his way of moving, you know, that he brought in.

Q: Where did he start?

Kronstam: He started with the madrigal, the first little pas de deux in the beginning of the ballroom scene. We slipped away from the party and we left. And then he went on with my entrance variation, and then Mona's. And then he must have done—it must have been the balcony pas de deux. But he had to know me, he had to know my abilities, how much I could jump, and if I could do a double saut de basque into arabesque, things like that. He had to know that.

Q: Did he watch you in class every day?

Kronstam: Oh, no. He was vomiting in the morning. Right in the middle of King's New Square. He was so frightened about the whole thing.

Q: I have read that he said that there was no Bournonville in Romeo and Juliet, and that he hadn't seen any classes or any performances when he was here.

Kronstam: Well, isn't that just like Fred? What about all those beats, and the triple dance for the three boys? I know he went to classes and performances. Sometimes he would come to Vera's afternoon class, and I think he saw Sonnambula.

Q: What about the dances for the corps de ballet? How did he work on those?

Kronstam: Well, all the big group dances, especially the townspeople, were mostly made on Flemming Flindt and Ole Fatum. He said, "What can you do? Show me? Oh, I'll use five of those, and I'll do five to the other side, and then I'll do five to that side, and five to the other side." He was not deeply interested in the corps de ballet.

Q: In the reviews, everybody said the ensemble dances are boring.

Kronstam: Yes. But they said, too, that the lyric, the poetry, of Shakespeare's words really came out in Ashton's ballet.

Q: Did he work with you on that in conversation, or in —

Kronstam: No. He didn't. He used the words, Shakespeare's words, and then I would go home and read how they came into the context of the story. That was what he did, because he had had them in his head, probably for a year, you know. So to him, it was natural. He would just say, "Well, now you hear the lark." And then Juliet says, "No, 'tis a nightingale." And then I had to go home and I had to start reading the whole story over, and figure out what he meant about that.

Q: Just out of curiosity, did you read it in English or in Danish?

Kronstam: In English. Fredbjørn [Bjørnsson] gave me the book of the play when he saw that I was to do Romeo.
And during the ten years I did it, it was more and more interesting to do, of course. The beginning was just so thrilling, so exciting.

Q: Just getting through it. Wasn't that difficult?

Kronstam: No. No. I had strength enough. That was no problem.

Q: From where did the strength come? You hadn't had a role that was that long before.

Kronstam: No, but you don't say no when you are twenty. You just do it.

Q: But how?

Kronstam: Working, working, working. Sometimes I did Stanley [Williams]'s children's class at a quarter to 9:00. And I did Vera's men's class, quarter past 10:00 until 11:30. I rehearsed, and then I did Vera's afternoon class from 4:00 to 6:00. Ashton took a lot of time with us in those seven weeks. A lot of time. He got very inspired by us. And Mona was very easy to partner. I'd never had a partnering class, but she was so straight in her pirouettes and her penché arabesques, so that was no problem.

Q: Was working with Ashton enjoyable?

Kronstam: Yes, but while you're working, you don't think so much about it. You just meet every day, and try to be as fresh and as clear and remember everything that he said yesterday, and go into it. But it was really after the premiere that I realized that he had made a masterwork.

Q: I wondered if you knew what you had been given.

Kronstam Yes, I knew, but I didn't know how it was going to be, because—well, I was too young to know.

Q: Did you think life was going to be like this? Lots of Romeo and Juliets?

Kronstam: Well, I was a dreamer. And there came a lot of Romeo and Juliets.

Go to Part 3

first published in DanceView
Volume 12, No. 1 Autumn 1994
© 2003 by Alexandra Tomalonis