VISITS by the Royal Danish Ballet are rare. The last time the company was in London was a decade ago, and the last time the Danes performed Bournonville in London was in 1974. So it’s a happy occasion that a group of dancers from Copenhagen has come to Sadler’s Wells this week to celebrate their great 19th-century choreographer.
Unfortunately we aren’t getting the entire Royal Danish Ballet, only 19 of its principals and soloists; and we aren’t getting the entire ballets, only excerpts. So the focus here is on style rather than content. But what style. Such lightness and grace, such elegance of presentation and ease of technique. Bournonville’s vibrant choreography may be difficult to dance, but you would never know it by looking at these strong, lovely Danes.
The programme opens with Le Conservatoire, which has Bournonville remembering his days as a young dancer in Paris in the 1820s. It’s a classroom ballet, the dancers taking turns to show us the hard work behind their craft. Tuesday’s performance was a little sluggish, lacking the lift we associate with his writing. But still, how many other dancers can sail through those devillish beats of the foot? Thomas Lund, responsible for organising this group, partnered Caroline Cavallo in the gently flirtatious pas de deux from Flower Festival in Genzano. Lund is a tremendous jumper and extremely likeable performer, while Cavallo strikes just the right tone of demure femininity and sparkling technique. The Spanish- flavoured trio from La Ventana shows clearly how inner steel is neatly subservient to surface delicacy, especially in the performance of Tim Matiakis (pictured), while Bournonville’s famous humour is charmingly played in the Jockey Dance, a duet for rival jockeys which celebrates the English passion for horse racing.
Seeing the pas de deux and divertissement from Act II of La Sylphide is to take Bournonville’s most famous work out of context, and not surprisingly the magic of its supernatural love story is lost. But as a taste of Romantic manners it’s unsurpassed. Silja Schandorff is bewitching as the Sylph; Mads Blangstrup is a fine James.
Predictably, Napoli brings the house down. This sunny Neapolitan love story ends with a wedding knees-up that features the entire troupe in a spirited allegro, buoyed by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia’s felicitous playing. The combined joie de vivre from stage and pit is utterly contagious, which is precisely what Bournonville had in mind 150 years ago.