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The Bournonville Archive

Bournonville in Hell
Part Ib; Bournonville Stagings from the 1979 Bournonville Festival through 1993

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 1998 by Alexandra Tomalonis

In 1977, Flemming Flindt resigned, after having served three terms as balletmaster. He was a figure of authority, but had received mixed reviews as a director, some admiring his attempts to modernize the company, others disliking his ballets. His big hit was a theater piece to rock music called Dødens Triomph, or The Triumph of Death, in which the dancers were nude and sprayed with paint. Flindt had a small, devoted core of followers in the company, and several left with him when he left to try to establish his own, independent troupe. The majority of the dancers, though, and (by box office measure) the audience still wanted a classical repertory and resisted Flindt's efforts at modernization.. The Minister of Culture, a man named Niels Mathiessen, the last Minister of Culture, I am told, who actually appreciated the fine arts, also wanted the Royal Danes to be classical again, and asked Henning Kronstam to head the company. To the dancers, he was the obvious choice, but Kronstam persistently declined the offer, saying he didn't want the job, until he was told that if he didn't take it, an administrator would be appointed to oversee the company until a suitable balletmaster could be found.

Kronstam inherited a company with a disproportionate number of dancers in their thirties (the result of overhiring in the good-time '60s) and a gap of principals and principal material after the extraordinarily talented class of Arne Villumsen, Ib Andersen, Mette-Ida Kirk, Lis Jeppesen, Linda Hindberg, and Heidi Ryom, whose careers all started in the late '70s. There were talented dancers who came into the company during Kronstam's first years, but no stars, and there were years when no dancers were taken in from the school. The school (which Kronstam had headed during the Flindt era) had lost its best teachers in the early '70s, with Vera Volkova's illness and death in 1975, and the temporary loss of another Vaganova-style teacher, Edite Frandsen, to Vienna. The school was staffed by untrained teachers—good dancers, but people who didn't know how to teach children. At Erik Bruhn's suggestion, one of Kronstam's first actions was to send several dancers to study with Betty Oliphant in Canada. His purpose was not so much to acquire a foreign system as to have the dancers work with an inspired teacher. Much of the Canadian syllabus was modified within the first few years, but the lessons of how to teach remained.

Kronstam's first priority was to make the company Danish again, and try to remold it into an ensemble. He programmed for the Danish audience, not the international press, and programs were planned so that as many dancers as possible could take part in each one. Serenade, Flower Festival pas de deux, and The King's Volunteers on Amager (which brought Hans Brenaa back to the company after a three-year absence, caused by a tiff with Flindt) opened his first season, and sent a clear signal of his intentions. It was greeted with a sigh of relief and pleasure by most of the dancers, while regarded by others, especially the Danish critics, as a sign of indecisiveness, of Kronstam's lack of creativity and imagination.

Restoring Brenaa to the company meant that the Bournonville stagings would continue to be traditional ones, despite considerable pressure from outside the company to bring in new, updated versions. Kronstam very much wanted to preserve the Bournonville repertory and ensure that the company's young dancers, who had not grown up with the works as intimately as prior generations, got a thorough exposure to the entire repertory. Even before he took over officially as director, he put into motion what became known as the Bournonville Festival, held in November 1979, the 100th anniversary of Bournonville's death. At first there was only to be a single evening, with La Sylphide and Napoli III, but he began planning, with Brenaa and Kirsten Ralov (who was Kronstam's assistant balletmaster) a larger celebration, thinking that this would be the ideal opportunity to stage as much of the Bournonville repertory as possible, presenting all of the ballets in a week's time. Mathiessen was enthusiastic about the idea, gave it his full support, and soon it seemed as though the whole city was involved: books about Bournonville were published, museums had exhibits, et cetera. This was a monumental undertaking, as several of the ballets had been out of repertory for several years, and the ten ballets and excerpts had to be restored in a single season.

This period was really the first time that the Bournonville repertory had been rethought since Lander's time, although it was not "rethought" in the way that many would have preferred. In Copenhagen since the Lander years, ballets seem to have been viewed as plays with steps in them. The story is pre-eminent, and dancers are judged on how they interpret the characters. From the mid-'60s on, it was fashionable in the West to rethink nineteenth century ballets, to bring them up to date, which usually meant imposing a supposedly deep psychological interpretation. It was thought that ballets, like plays, should be set in different time periods, in different countries to be seen as contemporary. In Denmark, part of the reason for this attitude was a desire for novelty, caused by the fact that the RDB is the only ballet company in Denmark. If a balletmaster wants to be wildly popular in Copenhagen (if you intend to be a candidate for directorship of the Danish ballet, please don't read this sentence), all he need do is mount rethought versions of old ballets incessantly. Danish critic Erik Aschengreen wrote a long article at the beginning of Kronstam's last season as a director in which he criticized Kronstam (and Ralov and Brenaa) for not being "new thinkers," for merely presenting the same old productions that he'd been watching for years, and his was by no means an isolated view. The writer went on to ask why Kronstam hadn't acquired Peter Schaufuss's staging of La Sylphide, or one of Elsa Marianne von Rosen's Bournonville ballets? Why not have John Neumeier come and do a new Napoli?

A Time of Renewal

No, Kronstam and Brenaa and Ralov were not new thinkers. Until 1994, the Royal Danish way of renewing ballets was through its dancers. Each new generation, each new cast, brought new experiences, refreshing the ballets without the need to change a single step or reprint the libretti. Brenaa, Ralov and Kronstam each made slight changes to the ballets, but the changes were consonant with both style and spirit, and the three saw their task as being conservators. This in no way means that their ballets were dusty. Each had a different style, and each made different contributions.

Kirsten Ralov took over the Bournonville stagings during the three years that Brenaa was away from the company; later, she continued to keep up A Folk Tale and Napoli after he returned. The (first) Festival Folk Tale was the most radical and, I think, the best modernization of a Bournonville ballet yet made, yet it was done in a very traditional way. Folk Tale was still recognizably Folk Tale. The major change was in the characterization of the trolls. Rather than funny, storybook characters with colorful names from Danish folklore, Ralov's trolls were unkempt, uninhibited, a little bit nasty, and very human. In a way, they were a mirror for the viewer, letting us see the less appealing side of human nature, exaggerated and sometimes funny, but very real. Fredbjørn Bjørnsson took the part of Viderik, the nicer of the two troll sons, and developed it into a major role without upstaging anyone or destroying the balance of his scenes. His Viderik—desperate with longing and utterly aware of his own inadequacies—was extraordinarily poignant, and enriched the ballet. These changes did no violence to Bournonville's ideas, and gave the ballet a darker coloration, making it more credible to a contemporary audience, than Brenaa's older (equally wonderful, in its own way) storybook version.

Brenaa changed, or allowed the dancers to change, two character parts in Kermesse. The widow, Fru Von Everdingen, who falls in love with the ill-mannered brother, had always been played as a sour old woman, long past love, and that had provided its own humor. But Brenaa thought that Kirsten Simone, then in her early forties, queenly and quite beautiful, would be even funnier as the duped widow. Simone, in a beautiful costume, stole the show. Brenaa would know, because he knew the dancers, whether successive Fru von Es would be the sour old woman, or the beautiful younger one, and cast them accordingly. Similarly, Bjørnsson had a hilarious bit part as an outrageously vain and impatient servant. This coexisted happily in repertory with Tage Wendt's very dry, traditional interpretation of the same character. Brenaa knew the ballets and the company well enough to permit experimentation, while keeping the traditional way active in memory, and would return to as appropriate. His view was very long-term, across about eight dancer-generations.

Kronstam began making subtle changes in La Sylphide, when he took over the production after Brenaa's death. ("He stepped in and didn't miss as beat," said one of the dancers who took part in those rehearsals, which undoubtedly contributed to the notion that Bournonville ballets staged themselves.) Two minor emhancements indicate how Kronstam worked. The first was changing the tempo and dynamic of the first act's reel. Kronstam's direction gave the dancing a fierce, almost wild, and very masculine quality, presenting a stronger contrast to the quiet, feminine world of the Sylph and her sisters. It was a musical reflection of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the first act, helping to make the contrast with the second act more distinct. A second tiny change involved casting. Kronstam had learned from Brenaa the secret of changing the way a role was danced by simply changing the dancer. In the fortune-telling scene, Kronstam thought that the dancer playing the role of the girl who learns she's pregnant was a little too broad, that the humor was a bit too obvious. What was being done suited the dancer then in the role, but he wanted another coloration, so he began to experiment. He first cast one of the company's most flirtatious dancers, and although the broadness disappeared, the moment wasn't as funny, because the girl was such an obvious flirt. His next choice solved the problem. He put a dancer in the role whose open face and youth made her look not only innocent, but absolutely naive, "as though she could be tricked into doing anything," he said. It worked. The bit was funny again, but in a more delicate way. Kronstam was definitely a long-term thinker, and his patience in fine-tuning a ballet moment by moment was one of the reasons his productions were so perfect.

After the Festival, Kronstam had each of the extant ballets videotaped twice, once in practice clothes so the steps and gestures could be clearly seen by future stagers, and a second time in costume, for a fuller effect, to insure that the ballets would not be lost. He kept the ballets in repertory in rotation throughout his seven years as balletmaster, believing that Bournonville should make up a third of the repertory, and that no ballet should be out of repertory too long, lest the dancers lose touch with it. The 1979 Festival reintroduced the company and the city, and introduced the world, to the Bournonville's ballets. Seeing all of those works in a single week was an extraordinary experience. Bournonville was suddenly one of the world's great choreographers. Before 1979, dance history texts barely mentioned him; now, he has his own chapter. But there were unintended negative side effects, too. For one thing, the dancers became self-conscious about the ballets. Instead of relying on the instincts of a few producers of genius, a dozen "experts" came forward, wanting to rethink, restage, rework, revise the ballets. Matters that had been instinctive became seminar topics. Is the style accurate? How high should the leg be lifted? Overnight, Bournonville became a commodity, and things would never be quite the same again.

Kronstam had agreed to serve as director for only one four-year term. When that term expired, there was no discussion of a replacement, and he remained as balletmaster, serving without a contract for three more years, during which time the long-scheduled renovation of the backstage area of the Royal Theater took place. The company performed in an unsuitable theater in Tivoli (the best substitute available), shuttling back and forth between classes at Kongens Nytorv and performances at Tivoli. The stage was long and narrow and ballets had to be reworked-often reblocked and resized-to suit it. The stage dictated repertory, which had to be programmed for not only a different space, but a different audience. Conditions were so unpleasant that Kronstam kept the company on tour as much as possible "to keep their mind off what was going on at home." Kronstam, who was in poor health, stayed because he knew it would be difficult for anyone to take over the company under these conditions. The year before the company was to move back into its proper home, he gave a year's notice, and a search for a successor began.

It was obvious there was no adequate successor within the company, and for the first time in this century, the Theatre turned to the outside world for a director. The position was first offered to Helgi Tomasson. Although Tomasson was interested, he ultimately could not come to terms in a variety of areas with the Theater's administration. The post was then offered to Toni Lander (one of Harald's former wives), who had been a close second choice of both the Theater and the dancers. Toni Lander accepted and resigned the position on the same day, as she had just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The Theater's administration apparently decided that it did not want to put out another call for candidates, but chose Frank Andersen from the remaining applicants, all company members.

The decision was made very quickly, and the dancers were told of Toni Lander's illness and Andersen's appintment at the same meeting. Both announcements caused quite a shock. The dancers were, of course, sad to learn of Lander's illness. They had not expected Andersen's appointment, and did not welcome it. Andersen was very young, with virtually no international experience or connections, and was not highly regarded as a dancer. Kronstam was to stay on as an "Artistic Adviser," and correspondence from the Theater Chief states quite clearly that the change was "structural only." Kronstam was to continue what he had been doing — teaching, staging the repertory, and coaching dancers — but would be relieved of the administrative meetings and press duties that he hated. Ralov, too, agreed to stay on as assistant balletmaster (she resigned after a few months, unable to work with Andersen, though she remained at the Theater for few years, teaching and producing). Why she was not offered the top position is a mystery, as she had the experience, the authority, and the respect of the company.

There were persistent reports during his directorship that the dancers did not like Andersen, but I found very little personal animosity towards him. Most of the dancers did, and do, like him, and many say they are very grateful to him for the opportunities he gave them, and that he was always very supportive when they sought leave for guest engagements or to enter competitions. But they did not respect him as an artist, and that opinion did not change during the nine years he was balletmaster. "I hate to say this, because Frank worked so hard — he would be here until midnight sometimes. But in every meaningful way, Henning was still the balletmaster," was how one dancer put it, and that is a sentiment most would echo.

People are remarkably uniform in their assessment of Andersen, agreeing that his strengths are an enormous energy and capacity for hard work, and his weakness is that he has — there is no way to say this gently — bad taste. By this, they do not mean that Andersen tells vulgar jokes or wears yellow plaid suits, but rather that he suffers from an impaired artistic judgment, lacking the ability to make aesthetic distinctions, whether in choosing repertory or coaching dancers. What those outside the company, especially Americans, saw as an infectious enthusiasm for his achievements, most of the dancers saw, and resented, as a relentless self-promotion and a propensity to take credit for the accomplishments of others. Another problem was that both Flindt and Kronstam were strong personalities, and had had very definite, if very different, visions for the company; their directorships were the execution of a consistent policy. Andersen seemed to be guided as much by personal ambition as by artistic considerations. His directorship was so geared to courting the press that it began to resemble a series of photo opportunities, with constant galas, guest stars, premieres, festivals, award ceremonies, and celebrations.

In some ways, Andersen continued Kronstam's policies, at least for his first term, but the approaches of the two men could not have been more different. Kronstam was an institutional balletmaster in the best sense of the word, a master of long-term thinking and planning. He knew how to build a season — when to schedule ballets and in what order to put them on, so as to properly prepare the dancers — and he understood that a company could not run on press nights and premieres. During Andersen's tenure, first nights received generous rehearsal time, while subsequent performances often had to make do with minimal rehearsal, giving the company a reputation of not being able to maintain its repertory. Andersen realized the importance of the Bournonville repertory and wanted to keep it (although his assertion that he was all that stood between Bournonville and oblivion was hyperbole, even for him), but he also tried to internationalize the company; he seemed to be trying to turn the company into ABT, or at least a competitor on the same level with ABT. He wanted a big company, with lots of stars and lots of hits. For this, he needed to expand the company, and ran into trouble almost immediately by trying to fire, without administrative hearing, several older dancers, including Sorella Englund, not only one of the finest artists in the Theater, but one of the most revered. Andersen wanted to replace these dancers with new, younger, foreign ones. This is the first act of many a contemporary balletmaster, but it did not go over well in Copenhagen. (There are two persistent rumors about this incident, one that Andersen volunteered to fire the dancers in order to get the job, the other that he was ordered to do so by the Theater. Administration sources involved in the incident informed me that neither rumor is true.) The dancers union vigorously fought the action. Andersen and the Theater backed down, but not before Andersen had been given a vote of No Confidence by the dancers, a vote which was never rescinded.

At first, Brenaa and Ralov continued to stage the Bournonville repertory, with Kronstam concentrating on the international side. Then in 1988, in the midst of preparing a new production of Kermesse in Bruges, Hans Brenaa died. This was, in many ways, the beginning of the end of the Bournonville ballets as we know them, because the way Andersen assigned Brenaa's repertory insured its decline. But Brenaa's death was not the only blow to Bournonville. During the 1989 Danish elections, the management of the Royal Theater became a campaign issue. The reformists won, and a shake up began. A new Theater Chief was appointed, a university administrator with no connection with the Theater, or any theater (this was seen as a plus) and who had come to their attention for having successfully put down a student revolt.

The change in administration occurred just as Andersen's contract was about to expire. The dancers expected there would be a search for a new director, but the new Theater Chief renewed Andersen's contract, reportedly because the other two branches of the Theater were leaderless, for varying reasons, and she was reluctant to take over with a completely new administration. She had been given the task of reorganizing the theater, and left the artistic matters of each branch to its director; a not illogical division of labor. From this time, Andersen's policies began to change, and he quickly began to take actions, especially in personnel matters, that the previous administration would not have permitted.

One of the first ominous signs was that Arlette Weinrich, assistant to both Brenaa and Kronstam and, many feel, by far the best choice to continue the Bournonville tradition, was eased out. Eva Kloborg, Andersen's wife, replaced her as a producer, and Anne Marie Vessel, Brenaa's other assistant, became, with Andersen, the custodian of the Bournonville repertory. Lise LaCour, who had replaced Ralov as assistant balletmaster and who had ambitions as a choreographer, took over from Weinrich as assistant on Kronstam's productions.

Ralov was the next to go. She went to Andersen before leaving on a trip to stage Folk Tale in Russia, told him she had some ideas for a new production, which she would like to stage upon her return. She left thinking she had his approval; when she came back, she was told that Andersen would be staging a new Folk Tale, with designs by Queen Margrethe II (an otherwise exemplary monarch), and a new Napoli, for a Bournonville festival he was planning in 1992. Ralov was, as one dancer put it, "the most professional person in the Theater," and her brisk, no-nonsense manner in rehearsals was a constant reminder of Theater tradition and Theater discipline. She was the resident expert in Bournonville technique, and especially gifted in coaching both men and women in the style. She was irreplaceable, and her departure meant that the company had lost, within the space of two years, two of their three producers, and a generation of institutional memory.

Andersen and Vessel took over Brenaa's production of Coppelia. This was a logical first effort, as both had danced the leading roles many times, and the ballet had been in repertory consistently. They merely had to direct the production. Bent Schønberg, one of the senior Danish critics and Brenaa's biographer, reviewed the result in World Ballet and Dance, 1989-90, and his opinion is worth quoting at length, for it indicates what was about to happen to Bournonville.

After praising other ballets in the repertory that season, Schønberg wrote: "Exactly the opposite was a catastrophic version of Coppelia. This light and gay ballet has been danced at the Royal Theater since 1896. The Beck-Lander version, later continued by Hans Brenaa, was, in my opinion, the best in the world. Not so any more. Anne Marie Vessel, who with Arlette Weinrich was brought up by Brenaa as his Crown Princesses for preserving the Bournonville repertory (and Coppelia) intact, co-directed this Delibes charmer with Frank Andersen.. . .All the magic had disappeared. All the humour had gone as well. The same with the lightness, the flirtations, the whimsy, which usually pervade the ballet. All gone. Petrusjka Broholm and Nikolaj Hübbe danced Swanilda and Frantz with nonstop energy, but to no avail. Nothing was logical or coherent in their portrayals. In fact, they played to the audience much; more than to each other. It would appear that the directors had let them down abysmally.. . .For the second pair of principals, Henriette Muus and Lloyd Riggins, things were even worse. From their interpretations, no one would guess they were in love with each other! They were simply two rather good, sympathetic dancers who simply did not understand their roles and obviously had received no coaching."

Schønberg's anguish was not misplaced, nor was it an isolated opinion. There is disagreement as to whether Andersen (it looks more like his work than Vessel's, judged by her two productions for II Bournonville; they were much slacker) was trying to reproduce Brenaa's direction exactly, or if he was putting into practice changes in company performing style that he had long wanted to effect, but that he had been unable to do before. I lean towards the latter view. I think he wanted the dancing to have more pizzazz. One dancer in that Coppelia said, "Frank tried to Neumeierize the ballet," meaning that he gave the dancers specific instructions or "motivations" for each scene. However, what might be appropriate for something as dramatically complex as Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet was too much for poor little Coppelia. I saw that production, and it's the only time I sat in the Royal Theater and hated watching mime. Each. Gesture. Was. Delivered. With. The. Same. Dynamic. Until. You. Wanted. To. Scream. The ballet went on forever. Undoubtedly, the intention was to be sure the mime was clear (oh, it was), but in this case, the cost of clarity was too high.

Andersen and Vessel next began working on a new production of A Folk Tale, a ballet about ten times as complex as Coppelia. An analysis of that, and the other 1992 Festival productions, will be in Part II of this article and will appear in the next issue.

Andersen obviously had not given up on his idea of removing the older dancers and replacing them with younger ones, and worked hard to get the dancers' pension age (then about 46) lowered to 40. He had "twenty girls over forty," as he often said. At the time, I understood that the problem was that the dancers' contract had expired and they had been left pensionless, that Andersen was working to get new pension terms, but I must have misunderstood. Even the pigeons in Denmark have pensions. At any rate, the age at which a dancer was eligible for a pension —i.e., the mandatory retirement age—was lowered to 40. There were massive retirements at the end of the '92 Festival and tour, and the company was left with only about a half-dozen older dancers. Many of the best mimes went with the purge. "Frank only kept the ones who sucked up to him," as one dancer put it.

How Andersen thought he could keep the Bournonville ballets in repertory with so few "character principals," as they were now called, is difficult to imagine, but Bournonville was not much in evidence in post-festival Copenhagen. The season after II Bournonville was devoted to Balanchine, the one after that to Sleeping Beauty. A Neumeier festival had been penciled in for the future. Bournonville was resting, albeit unquietly.

The final, and most consequential, change was completion of the substitution of Andersen, LaCour, Vessel and Kloborg for the experienced, capable staging team of Brenaa, Ralov, and Kronstam. With Brenaa dead and Ralov out, there was now only Kronstam left. Moves had been made to reduce Kronstam's responsibilities and role in the direction of the company as early as the 1990-91 season, but it did not become obvious to him until the spring of '92 that "something was going to happen."

Kronstam and Andersen were working on a new production of Napoli. The idea was to restore anything that Kronstam could remember from older productions that had gotten lost over the years. They would play old videos and work out the mime parts. "I knew Frank was trying to get everything out of me that he could, so he could get rid of me, because he thought he could stage it himself if he had a video," Kronstam said, "but I didn't care. We had a good time." The good times were short-lived. In the weeks after the festival, Kronstam was removed from teaching, and told that the next season LaCour would rehearse Onegin (which had been Kronstam's responsibility since it entered the repertory a few seasons before; LaCour is to Kronstam as Vanna White is to Anthony Hopkins).

The following fall, when Kronstam negotiated his contract for the '93-'94 season, he learned that all the ballets he usually rehearsed had been crammed into a two-month period, so that he could not possibly rehearse them. He was only scheduled to do three ballets, and was not even to rehearse Napoli; that production would be taken over by Andersen and Kloborg. He was removed from directing several Balanchine ballets, one of which, Apollo, he had rehearsed (with Balanchine's consent while the choreographer was alive) since it entered the repertory in 1956.

While most men, especially one so popular with the dancers, would have taken the situation to the press, Kronstam did not.  Nor did he turn to the dancers; he remembered how difficult the Lander Scandal had been and he did not want to split the company. His silence proved his undoing. Kronstam was subject to frequent depressions, a fact known to several of the actors of this drama; Kronstam assumed that it was known generally. He suffered a breakdown in January of 1993, yet continued to work, unaware that rumors were being spread, not that he was in the midst of a breakdown or a depression, but that he was an alcoholic. In April of 1993, his contract for the 1993-94 season was cancelled and he was given instead (without warning or discussion) a contract for only three months, a contract which he did not sign. Since the dancers did not understand what was going on, and since no one in the New Management understood Kronstam's importance to the company, it was easy to effect his removal, and Kronstam was dismissed in May of 1993. He never fully recovered from the breakdown, and his death two years later at the age of 60 deprived the company of its best hope for a quick revival. He was, as many dancers said, very much the last of a line.

At the beginning of the season after the '92 festival, Andersen had received a second No Confidence vote from the dancers, based on artistic complaints. The Tivoli/Defense Department team was in place by now, and they probably wanted to be sure Andersen's contract wouldn't be renewed by default a second time. They needn't have worried. The New Team probably wouldn't have renewed Andersen's contract if he showed them signed affidavits by the angels attesting to his prowess. They wanted an international star, a high profile director, to head the company, and they wanted, if not an end to tradition, a breaking away from it. What the young Danes called "Tivilization" had come to Kongens Nytorv.

To be continued. . .

[Web version; 1998-2003; last updated October 203]]

[Back to Bournonville in Hell] [On to Part 2]

first published in DanceView
© 2003 by Alexandra Tomalonis