Royal Danish Ballet dancers celebrate Bournonville in London
As a cure for the post Christmas blues – or to help celebrate that the festivities are over, depending on your point of view – principals and soloists from The Royal Danish Ballet alight at London’s Peacock Theatre. On Friday 9 January and Saturday 10 January 2015 the dancers will present a mouth-watering Bournonville Celebration.
Ten years after the company’s last visit to Sadler’s Wells, it’s dancers perform a programme featuring excerpts from works by August Bournonville, who created more than fifty works for the company.
Excerpts from his ballets include La Sylphide, Napoli, A Folk Tale, and Conservatory. As a choreographer, Bournonville believed that beauty is forever modern and with ballet companies still performing his ballets today, 136 years after his death, it proves that his sense of beauty is still very much alive.
Alban Lendorf, Gudrun Bojesen, Ulrik Birkkjaer, Susanne Grinder, Gregory Dean, Amy Watson, Marcin Kupinski, Diana Cuni, Andreas Kaas, Femke Slot, Sebastian Haynes and Kizzy Matiakis will be dancing. The programme is as follows:
Bournonville Celebration
Pas de sept from A Folk Tale
Pas de deux from The Flower Festival in Genzano
Jockey Dance from Siberia to Moscow (Bournonville’s last ballet, choreographed in 1876)
La Sylphide Act Two
INTERVAL
Pas de trois from The Conservatory (his 1849 ballet set in the Ballet School of the Paris Opera)
Pas de six and tarantella from Napoli
The Peacock, Portugal Street, Holborn, WC2A 2HT
Friday 9th & Saturday 10th January, 2015 (Friday & Saturday at 7.30pm; Saturday at 2.30pm)§
Tickets: £18 – £48§
Ticket office: 0844 412 4322 www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/2015/the-royal-danish-ballet/booking
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
