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The Ashton Archive

A Conversation with Henning Kronstam, Part 3
Working with Ashton on Romeo and Juliet'
by Alexandra Tomalonis
© 2003

Q: How did you work on the characterization?

Kronstam: All I had was the movie with Laurence Harvey, who was beautiful in it. That was in the cinemas about a month before we had the opening night. So of course that made a big impression on me. But otherwise, Fred was very open, very free with me, and whatever I felt doing. He would say, "Do you feel comfortable in this? Do you feel all right?" Oh, he was very sweet. Indeed.

Q: Would he ever give corrections on the dramatic parts?

Kronstam: No, but I did what he said, so I didn't do anything else before I knew what it was about. I was very disciplined at that age. No, he was—I don't think we had one discussion. It was all a happy occasion.

Q: Was he pleased, after all the nervousness?

Kronstam: Yes, he was. It was a tremendous success. You know, at our theater, we only had one curtain call at that time. Up and down, that was it. Then to have nine, with full corps de ballet—

Q: I've read that the single curtain call was an actual law.

Kronstam: Oh, yes. It was. The law said no curtain calls whatsoever. It was because of our Kchessinskaya, you know, the one who had the affair with the Crown Prince?

Q: No! Who was that?

Kronstam: Oh, it was back in the nineteenth century. It was Augusta Nielsen, I think. And she would take her curtain calls wearing all these jewels, and they didn't like it, so they passed a law that there could be no curtain calls. The law finally went out in the mid-'60s, when Flindt was balletmaster.

Q: Did someone have to give permission for the extra curtain calls?

Kronstam: I don't know who did it, whether it was Niels Bjørn or the head of the Theatre, but somebody had to give permission. I think maybe we had expected two curtain calls, but the applause kept coming and coming. I had never had a call like that. But Ashton was like a lot of other choreographers. He said, "It won't last. It will only last a couple of years, and that's it." So when I took the pas de deux to New York, and then Peter Schaufuss took the ballet on again, he said, "Oh! Why do you do my old stuff?"

Q: How did you come to bring the pas de deux to the Met [in May 1984 for the Metropolitan Opera's 100th Anniversary gala]?

Kronstam: Jane Hermann called me and asked us to come, and said to bring the Coppelia pas de deux. And I said no, because it's a bad pas de deux and it doesn't have a coda. So I said I would bring the Romeo and Juliet pas de deux, and I called Fred and asked him, and he said, "Well, all right, Henning, if you can remember it."

Q: What did you think of the ballet musically?

Kronstam: Fred told me that he never worked on the beat of the music. He always worked on the melody. So that means, of course, if the melody is sort of underlined a little, and there's a lot of [loud crashing chords] then of course it will be. But he wanted a lyrical ballet. Definitely. And—well, the pas de deux, and Frank's role, and the pretty little girls were so beautiful, so feminine. Lilian Jensen was extraordinary as the mother. So.

Q: Could we go back to how he worked? Did he show you what to do? Did he call out steps to you, or—

Kronstam: No. He said, "Can you do something like this?" And then he did his steps. And then I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "Well, of course, up in the air, and both legs, and end in high arabesque. Stupid boy!" And then I understood. He couldn't show it at that time, really. What was he? At the end of his forties? So he marked it. He still could mark the steps. And especially Juliet. He loved to do Juliet! He was very correct about it, you know, like the boys' dance. He knew exactly what he wanted about that. But with the pas de deux, it was a little different. "Couldn't you do it once more?" And "couldn't you do it twice a little different?" And could you raise your arm a little more, and could you use a little more back, and things like that.

Q: What about Juliet's arm movements, the cradling—

Kronstam: Yes. Very much over the head, and very much back into Romeo

Q: Can you remember how that came about?

Kronstam: Well, that was his way of doing the ballet. That's what he wanted, that she should almost touch my hair to show her feelings for Romeo.

Q: What about the duels. Had you ever had training in sword fighting?

Kronstam: No. No. And we didn't even have a teacher for it. We had that later, for the Neumeier [production of Romeo and Juliet in 1976]. So we just went on. Niels Bjørn [Larsen] was Tybalt, and I was Romeo, and Frank [Schaufuss] was Mercutio, and we figured out what to do. It was fencing, fencing, fencing, fencing, sticking, running up the stairs, fencing on the stairs, running down again, stick him in his stomach, and then he had to roll down, and then he crawled forward on his knees, and rose up, fell down, and died.

Q: But that would be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

Kronstam: It is. It is. Now, you've asked. I think we did have an old fencing teacher, a very old one. Yes, we did. And Ashton told him what he wanted, that he wanted the corps de ballet to move to this side, and then the dancers come up here, and then the corps de ballet back, and they're falling down the stairs, and things like that. He was there to explain the fencing manner. Sometimes Ashton had an idea and wanted this and that, but the fencing master said, "No, you have to do it this way." He was not very theatrical, the one we had at that time.

Q: Was anyone ever hurt?

Kronstam: Niels Bjørn was hurt one evening, because we were about seven steps up and I gave him such a bang in his shoulder with my sword that he fell down the stairs, and he broke his arm, and he crawled forward with a broken arm [mimes graphically]— And he raised up and he gave a scream, and he fell down on the floor, and he was laying still until the curtain went down.

Q: On stage, when there is a fight, you have to be into it, and yet you have to be out of it at the same time. How—

Kronstam: Well, we are Danes. We are different. We just go into it, and we fight. We don't hold back, or we don't think about what can happen. We work it up, we rehearse it and then we do it full out. So there is nothing playful about it. It is really going like a fight.

Q: During rehearsals, can you remember any part that you had to work and work on?

Kronstam: Only the scene where Mona had to go to the priest for the poison. That was really his big problem, because it's such beautiful music. It's a reminiscence of the balcony scene, you know. And he just couldn't figure out what to do. Because all she was doing was a little bourrée, and she did an arabesque, and she was standing, and he said, "Oh, you must do something else. This is too much. The music is too strong." Otherwise, no. No, I don't remember that there was any problem.
And he didn't have a fit. Not one. You know, a lot of choreographers have fits, because they are frightened that their work is maybe not good enough, and the dancers forget it from day to day, and things like that, and they get all those fits. Ashton didn't get one fit. After rehearsals, he went over to the [Hotel] D'Angleterre and was sitting with Stanley Williams, having a Scotch—but only one. And he said, "This was this day's work. Tomorrow is another day."

Q: How did your Romeo change in the ten years?

Kronstam: Well. Surely I must have been blank, like the old saying, you know, very weak and blank, in the beginning. But it changed, definitely. Because then came all these other roles, and I got more sure about myself on the stage. I dared more. I read more about the story, and then the critics came. You know, the critics are very important for us, because we live on that, sometimes. Of course, it was quite a different Romeo in 1965 than it was in 1955, quite different. First it was Mona, who was fifteen years older than I was. Then it was Kirsten Bundgaard, who was about five years younger. And then Anna [Laerkesen]. And then came Kirsten [Simone]. And it was with Kirsten that we succeeded, really, in New York in '65.

Q: I would think Romeo would be a hard role to do, because he doesn't have much personality in the play.

Kronstam: Well, I understood him. I certainly understood him. This is how it was. I was alone on the stage when the curtain opened. Ashton really wanted us to show the characters, and Romeo was romantic, dreaming. Then I went out, and there were two spots on Tybalt and Mercutio. So you could see what they were like. Tybalt was catlike, mean. And Mercutio was strong and handsome and wanted to fight. Romeo didn't know who he was, really. You know, he had his friends, and they were young boys. And he was more romantic than the others.

The rest of the story is so easy, because then comes the marriage, and then come the fights, first between Tybalt and Mercutio and then between Romeo and Tybalt. And then it's very natural that you—if you're moved in your spirit, which I was when I did the role, always, then you cannot help feeling hate for that Tybalt who did it. Even though it's an accident, you have to have revenge for it.

Q: In the revised version, Romeo shows that he's making up his mind about whether or not to fight by having a flower in one hand and the sword in the other.

Kronstam: I don't think that Fred needed that for me, because I already looked so unsureabout myself at that age. First I got the sword from Benvolio; then Romeo walks around Tybalt three times, and Tybalt just looks at him like he's shit. And this is too much. Then he gets really upset.

Q: Was he a wild boy before he met Juliet? Did he like the street fighting?

Kronstam: They all loved it. Romeo was a fighter. They were all fighters. Right from the start of the ballet, everybody just goes into fights. Even the girls go into fights, even in Ashton's very civilized version. I think Romeo is a very passionate boy who has kept his passion back because he doesn't know where to use it. He first realizes when he's met Juliet that he is alive. And then nothing can stop him. Then he can go. Then he can fight. He can be wedded. He can do everything, because he has met her.

Q: When your Romeo changed over time, was it that you would get another idea after five years, or—

Kronstam: No. It just changed as my own personality changed. You know, I never—I swear, I never gave a performance where I didn't give everything I had in me. So naturally, it grows. I don't think you can do a ballet like that for ten years and still be interesting in it without really being deeply involved in the role.

I saw one version here in Copenhagen by ABT. I won't mention the name of the boy who did Romeo, but I have never seen anybody looking more like a man who sells ties in Magasin du Nord. Completely indifferent to everything. I was shocked. She was good. She was especially good in third act—which is her act.

Q: Well, they don't have the same coaching.

Kronstam: No, that's what everybody says. They don't explain it. And you have to have certain things. You have to think—because you have seen in your eyes—everything is told by the eyes. When I did La Sylphide with Nina Ananashviali, she wrote to me afterwards she would never work with anybody else but me, because she did it in eight days, and she learned the whole role and every inch of what that person was. As a director, you've got to know who they are and what their reason is for doing what they're doing.

Q: I would think that would be the fun of it, too.

Kronstam: It is. It is. Even though the dancers say, "We've never done that before," you know. The Danish dancers. When I started on Napoli, I said, "I want you to do this and that." "We've never done that before." I said, "Well, well, well. But I was alive in 1943, and you weren't. So let's do it my way."

That was one of Hans Brenaa's wonderful remarks to me. I was doing Flower Festival for Solveig [Østergaard] and Niels [Kiehlet], and I went to Hans, and I said, "Are you absolutely sure that it's like this?" And he said, "No, no, no! I remember seeing Christian Christiansen"—who was, you know—

Q: Back in 1910.

Kronstam: "He was coming effacé on the stage, and it has always been effacé. I don't know how that came out." And I said, "But Hans, you produced it yourself with Kirsten [Ralov] and Fredbjørn [Bjørnsson], and he did croisé." "Yes," he said, "but that was only because Fredbjørn has an ugly effacé." So I said all right, and I made them do effacé. And they hated me for it.

Q: And now you can say Hans told you, and then they will understand that.

Kronstam: Well, no. Actually, I've gone back to the croisé, because it really is prettier.

Q: Back to Romeo, is there anything else you can remember?

Kronstam: Well, we had the premiere in the opening of the Festival in May, and it was on for two or three performances, and then we had to open with it in Edinburgh in August. And that was tough.

Q: Who kept it up?

Kronstam: Niels Bjørn was in charge at that time, and then Fred came up to Edinburgh, just to see that it looked all right. But it was not on the level that it had been. It could never be, you know, after two months holiday. You've got to have the proper rehearsal time, and we had to rehearse La Sylphide, and Folk Tale, all these ballets. And then Romeo and Juliet was right in the middle of it.

Q: And I think Ashton has to be —

Kronstam: Nursed. Because otherwise he says, "Oh, who cares. My old stuff."

Q: Do you think he really meant that?

Kronstam: Well, he said he didn't remember—Romeo, he said he definitely didn't remember a step of it. But when I came [to the Met] with Arne [Villumsen] and Lis [Jeppesen], I insisted that he have the last rehearsal with them. We went into the room and they started the pas de deux, and right away, he knew what was going on. Especially Lis. He was very enchanted with Lis, and he wanted her to do the first night in London. But then she got sick and couldn't do it. But he remembered. He said, "Is that right, Henning? Is that how you did it?" I said, "Yes, it is." "All right. But then I think a little more—a little more passion."

Q: Do you think he could ever have enough passion?

Kronstam: Oh, no. She had to grab Romeo's hands, and kiss them.

Q: I remember reading that some people were shocked at the pas de deux in the tomb scene.

Kronstam: There was nothing obscene about that scene. I just took her off the coffin, I brought her forward, put her on her pointes, lay her on my knee, put her on my left leg and embraced her, rose her up, looked at her one side and the other side, lifted her, and I put her back on the coffin. And today? What are they doing today? No, no. That was just—you know, sometimes critics have to say something. But Ashton was more erotic in it, even though it was very lyrical. He went a little further than he had done with the English ballet, I think. He dared to do more. All this kissing and all those things, he did that much later in his career in England.

Q: Do you remember anything he said about Juliet's character?

Kronstam: She was a young girl, always childish. That's why he wanted Mona and not Margrethe. He didn't want a romantic ballerina. He wanted a young girl, and that's what Mona looked like. With strong legs, and a beautiful arabesque. You saw what Juliet was like in the bedroom scene with the nurse. The Mother comes in and says, "Now Juliet, you are coming of age, and I think you should think about marriage, and we have thought of Prince Paris." Juliet is just amazed. She was not scared. She was not anything. She just thought it was beautiful, now she was coming of age.

Q: When you were working on it, can you remember if there was anything that you did spontaneously or unexpectedly that he liked and kept?

Kronstam: He was all the time telling me, "Henning, believe you are the best dancer on that stage. Do whatever you like to do, and I'll instruct the others about it." He gave me confidence, which was what I needed. You know, I was not even a principal dancer. I was just corps de ballet, just coming out of the aspirant class. So. I think that was what meant the most to me, that he believed in me so much that he gave me such a big role. And then that we would continue the friendship for such a long time.

Q He did another solo for you, in Sleeping Beauty about three years later.

Kronstam: It was in the DeValois production. I think she thought it suited me. It was the solo with the ronde de jambes. Ashton had done it for somebody in London who didn't like the other variation. But I had to go back to the other one, because whenever I went abroad—to the De Cuevas or the Stuttgart, or whatever—it was always the other. So I had to learn that version.

Q: Was that the only other time you worked with Ashton?

Kronstam: No, he came back to cast for Fille Mal Gardee. And on that day, I had to go into a part that Erik had done in a Frank Schaufuss ballet called Garden Party, because Erik had just left the company. So I was all made up, with hair set and everything, when I walked into the room. And he rose up and said, "Henning, you didn't need to do that." And I said, "Oh, Fred. It's not for you."

Q: Did you ever get to do Fille?

Kronstam: No. Kirsten [Simone] and I were supposed to do it, but then we went to America for three months, and when we came back, Flindt was coming in as ballet master the next season and he didn't want it in the repertory.

Q: What other contact did you have with Ashton?

Kronstam: When I was balletmaster, I came to see him for La Valse. The girls had been in all these drabby clothes for such a long time, you know. Strange skirts down to here. And I said, "We've got to do something so they can feel that they can put a tiara on the hair, and earrings, and everything." And that's why I got La Valse. And I got it for free.

Q: Did he stage it himself?

Kronstam: He came to choose the dancers. Robert Beale set it up, and Ashton came back to see the premiere. Afterwards, he came on the stage to get his flowers, and he moved forward and put them in front of Queen Ingrid, and he stepped back and bowed.

Then I saw him in New York, of course, when I came over with Arne and Lis to do the Romeo and Juliet, and we were together a couple of days. Then about three weeks before he died, I accepted the H.C. Andersen Award for him—that was something given by Frank [Andersen] and the Theatre. He had asked me. He said, "Would you accept the award for me, Henning, because you are the only one I love in Copenhagen."

Q: Before we leave Ashton, could I play you the videotape of the balcony pas de deux from the telecast of the Met gala, and see if watching it makes you remember anything else?

Kronstam: Sure. [Tape begins] This is the New York Met version. Lis is standing alone—now, the stairs were much higher, and there were no flowers around. It was a bare stage. But what I love is that it is so simple.

Q: Her arm movements, did that—

Kronstam: It's shivering. Like you can't fall asleep. She just cannot find rest, you know. It's like, "What's happened to me?" It has to be an expectation, freezing, but almost like a fever at the same time, from meeting this boy for the first time.

[Romeo enters] This is typical Ashton, you know. This is all breathing. We breathe together. You don't get that that much from Lis, but that's what it's supposed to be.

Q: [Romeo's solo begins.] Could you tell me what you remember about the solo?

Kronstam: We had a little foyer, the old foyer that was in the old theater, before it was rebuilt, and that's where we did his variation. He would have an idea about what was going to be done, but he did it on me, and whatever I could do, like the double sauts de basques into arabesque, the big kick, he used. He used all my épaulement—there was much more épaulement—and plié pas de bourée, and those pas de flêches, going down. plié pas de bourée, attitude, stay, and pliŽ pas de bourée, stay. He marked it, and I did it, and it was done in fifteen minutes.

Q: Was the phrasing—

Kronstam: The phrasing was much stronger.

Q: And you said the other day that the dancing should be sharper?

Kronstam: Definitely. A double pas de chat en tournant really has to be [snaps fingers]. And end in arabesque. And stand. And that's what he wanted.

Q: How do you keep it in the style? How do you make it sharp, but keep it smooth and creamy at the same time?

Kronstam: Because you know where to stop. You know which position—again, I come back to the plié. You've done your double sauts de basque, and you continue your plié. The position is there, but the plié can continue while you're lifting your left so it looks very harmonious.

Q: Did he give you any direction or lines, that sort of thing?

Kronstam: No, no. He didn't. It's a love declaration to Juliet. And that, I understood. [Tape continues.] The beautiful thing about it [the pas de deux] is, it's so simple.

Q: Yes. All the other choreographers would have Juliet being—

Kronstam: Oh! Turned around, and twirled around, and things like that. You can't get anything more simple than this. Just promenade, coupé— Now, this is what he called dancing on coals. Because he wanted her to do attitude piqué, piqué, attitude piqué, piqué, and Mona was doing it sort of—one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. And he said, "It shouldn't be like that. It should be like you are walking on burning coals. So that means that every lift of the leg should be like you've burned yourself."

Q: Rehearsing Apollo, in one of the variations Balanchine told Peter Martins that it should be like "walking on hot coals."

Kronstam: No, that wasn't Balanchine. That was Ashton.

Q: Apparently Balanchine used the same image for Apollo.

Kronstam: Wait—yes. I know which part he means. It's the beginning of the last variation. I remember Balanchine showed me the whole variation, and I did it, and he was amazed that I could do it the way he wanted it the first time. And he said, "How can you do that?" And I told him because Ashton did it for Juliet, and said it was to be like dancing on hot coals. It's the last variation, just before the last pirouette down on the knee.

Q: Ashton was always quoted as saying the eyes are very important.

Kronstam: Very. He said to me, "Don't smile. If you want to smile, smile with your eyes. But don't give me any grin." Brought up in the Bournonville style at that time, you naturally had it. But he said, "If you do it with your eyes, then your face will change." And this is another thing that I use in coaching, because some of the young boys say, "Well, I can't smile because I'm too nervous." And I say, "Well, I don't care. Your eyes have to smile. Your eyes." And the minute your eyes start smiling, your face lifts. And if your eyes are dull, forget it.

Q: [Tape continues] In the pas de deux, Juliet is almost leading, in a way. She's the one who takes the arabesque, and he has to come and support her. Did that just happen, or was that part of his plan?

Kronstam: Don't forget that Mona was thirty-five and I was twenty.

Q: And the little flutters with the feet, is that the heart beating?

Kronstam: Yes. Oh—that's Freddie! The way Lis runs to him? Fred stopped the rehearsals when we did it the first time, and then he went into Juliet, and he grabbed Arne's hands.

Q: That's more than a wave goodbye, that last gesture.

Kronstam: That's morning. That's the dawn coming up. There was the kiss, and then it was suddenly that the dawn was coming, and then jump over. [Tape ends]

Q: What do you think of Romeo and Juliet as a ballet?

Kronstam: It had wonderful roles. It was weak in the corps de ballet, especially the townspeople. Not so much the ball; the ball was rather powerful. He was interested in the main figures. He was interested in Romeo and Juliet, who were the main thing for him, and then Mercutio and Tybalt, the mother, the nurse. It was all the things that you would read in the play. You don't read about the peasants.

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