Volume 27, Number 4 · March 20, 1980
Great Dane
By Lincoln Kirstein
My Theater Life (Mit Theaterliv: 1877)
by August Bournonville, translated and annotated by Patricia N. McAndrew
Wesleyan University Press, 709 pp., $35.00
The King's Ballet Master: A Biography of Denmark's August Bournonville
by Walter Terry
Dodd, Mead, 173 pp., $8.95
The current emergence of Bournonville (1805-1879) in the United States as a formative presence in the descent of academic classic dancing is of concern and complexity. From festivals organized in Copenhagen by the Royal Danish Ballet whose tutelary genius he was and is, and its American tours, we have been made aware of a unique institution which for long has combined a thriving school, company, and repertory under stable national support. Bournonville's extant ballets, revived and conserved in tactful approximation of their producer's intention, offer variants of mimicry and motion from other capital traditions. Christian Johansson, a Swede trained in Denmark, entered the imperial ballet in Petersburg in 1841, danced and taught until 1903, exerting a powerful influence on three generations of dancers. His method directly affected the schooling of Nijinsky as an alternative to the Italian academy of Enrico Cecchetti. Denmark and Russia shared a common Franco-Italian inheritance; developments were disparate.
Review, 2736 words
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