THE DANES' FORMIDABLE LIGHTNESS OF FOOT
                        Dances to Remember, from Copenhagen 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of June  6-13, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 106
          BERKELEY---The male dancers of the Royal Danish Ballet are altogether unique in the world, often hovering seemingly weightless and nimble-footed over the stage.
            Performing at Zellerbach Hall, the touring company showed off those timeless, traditional Bournonville-launched assets in a varied and diverting repertory program June 4.
            If the men in the Bolshoi Ballet can be compared to eagles, the Danes’ are more like butterflies, with flying legs, gentle landings and airborne beauty.
            Nowhere was this more evident than in the capricious, flirtatious Johan  Kobborg “Les lutins,” where the two swains Charles Andersen and Marcin Kupinski in an informal setting compete to impress the lone female Alexandra lo Sardo. A classic “anything-you-can-do, I-can-do-better,” done in an improvisatory rehearsal “studio” with a fiddler on stage.
            How do the Danes achieve this? “”It’s all the jumping,” recalls Oakland Ballet founder Ronn Guidi, who had trained with them in the 1950s. In rehearsal, “we jumped, jumped, and jumped some more.”
                 But clearly the lean frames and the slender, nimble feet of the lean men have a lot to do with it as well. The unique tradition launched by founder August Bournonville close to two centuries ago still prevails today, with several of the latter’s choreographic works still in existence to highlight the technique. And the dancers are still admirable, with the males consistently getting the major attention.  
            The Danes showed off the technique in a conglomerated curtain-raiser for its males, “Bournonville Variations.”
            Jorma Elo’s “Lost on Slow” is an elegant and precise allegro piece with literal punctuation as the ballerinas abruptly poke their arms out unpredictably. It’s a quirky work with handstands and Vivaldi’s music.
            Kobborg’s “Salute” looks like a late 19th-century French confection, with spiffy military uniforms, and a petite comedienne-flirt  who sneaks into line, in uniform, and gets ever closer to the males.  
            Jorma Uotinen’s silly “Earth” wants to say something profound about tribes’ evolution toward civilization, but ends up with more of a sand-box setting for barefoot men in skirts, dashing about on red soil which, by the end, is probably coming out their ears and noses. The males lying on the stage kept raising legs and arms like flagpoles, to the loud  music by Metallica. Signaling for help, maybe? 
            Royal Danish Ballet at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, through June 4, under Cal Performances auspices. For info on CP: (642)  642-9988, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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