Ballerinas in the prettiest of frocks skim the stage in an embroidery of filigree steps; the male dancers bounce and soar blithely, as if on springs. And when they jump towards us, their arms reach out with the sense of an embrace. This is the Bournonville style, one of classical ballet’s great treasures — the spirit of joy, generosity and love.
In Copenhagen earlier this month, the Royal Danish Ballet celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of August Bournonville, the master choreographer of the Romantic age, with performances of all his surviving ballets from the 1830s to the 1870s. Some are scarcely known outside Denmark. Equally rare are this company’s visits to London: the last time they brought Bournonville here was 31 years ago. So we went to Sadler’s Wells to welcome a select troupe of Royal Danish dancers with our arms as open as their own.
It could have been an even happier event if funds or practicalities had run to decors. A succession of party pieces danced on a bare stage can lead — for all Bournonville’s genius — to a feeling of sameness. In Le Conservatoire, which re-creates a ballet class at the old Paris Opéra, the girls in white dresses and black chokers are straight out of Degas, but the setting was not to be seen. Still, this was an ideal opener, setting out the vocabulary of steps that informs Bournonville’s works.
Caroline Cavallo and Thomas Lund (the artistic director for this programme) were fleet, polished and affectionate in the delightful pas de deux from Flower Festival in Genzano; there was an elegant trio from La Vententana; and Morten Eggert and Nicolai Hansen gave a witty account of the Jockey Dance (the only surviving fragment from a memorably titled ballet, From Siberia to Moscow). An excerpt from La Sylphide, Bournonville’s best-known ballet, brought a gorgeous sylph in Silja Schandorff. Here, again, what we sorely missed was a forest decor to set context and atmosphere.
For the evening’s rousing climax, the divertissement from Napoli Act III, we got a hazy monochrome backdrop of Naples and Vesuvius — a pale substitute for the sunny Italy that the ballet enshrines. But no complaint about performance: these glorious dances are a cornucopian out- pouring of sheer joyousness, and the full company of 19 dancers were all brilliant in them.
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Our own Royal Ballet rounded off its Frederick Ashton centenary season with a special programme in the Linbury Theatre, Inspired by Ashton — a collection of new (or, in one case, recent) pieces in which younger choreographers aimed to reflect aspects of Ashton that had influenced them.
Antony Dowson’s Memento (to Rachmaninoff) was an elegant and fluent classical display, with a dreamy duet for Deirdre Chapman and Martin Harvey. In Two Footnotes to Ashton, using music by Gluck and Handel, Kim Brandstrup made a pair of striking dances that made you want more: a witty duet in which Johan Kobborg contended with Alina Cojocaru, and a subtle solo of lament for Zenaida Yanowsky.
The ultramodernist Wayne McGregor used Cojocaru also, for a sharp and sinuous pas de deux, Engram, with Federico Bonelli manipulating her like a captured bird, but this was blighted by the dreadful din of its accompaniment and an ill-advised, top-speed film montage of images from Ashton’s life that was enough to give you brain fever. Will Tuckett closed with Mr Bear-Squash-You-All-Flat, a dotty fable to a lively score by Constant Lambert (the Royal Ballet’s founder musical director), with a gallery of animal-character cameos — Laura Morera’s perky mouse, Belinda Hatley’s myopic hedgehog, Luke Heydon’s delightful green-handed frog, Paul Kay’s acrobatic duck, Steven McRae’s cheeky cat (dressed like a French onion-seller) and Yanowsky’s morose, lumbering donkey. The Ashton reference here was surely to his Tales of Beatrix Potter.
At the Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham Royal Ballet went all-out for new choreography, in a double bill created by company dancers. Jonathan Payn’s amusing and boisterous opener, Into the Ferment, uses a colourful score by James MacMillan, based on a Robert Burns poem. Payn’s dance has deft momentum and lively characterisation.
The Planets (to Holst’s full score) is an ambitious colla- boration between seven choreo-graphers — one for each number. David Bintley (the director) contributes a serene trio for Venus. Lei Zhao’s Jupiter is packed with bravura steps that wow the audience. Saturn, by Michael Kopinski, is quirky and mysterious, as is Kit Holder’s Uranus, in which Elisha Willis suffers a Giselle-like derangement. Jenny Murphy’s Neptune has the feel of a “vision scene”. Quite a conspectus of styles, but overall, cohesive: a big effort with a full company cast, admirable performances and value for money at £10 for all seats.