Turning a Danish Prism of Joy

<First published online in the New York Times on July 14, 2007>

BECKET, Mass., July 13 — Does any art convey joy better than dance? W. H. Auden, writing about “The Nutcracker” in particular, spoke of the “present Eden” that ballet is singularly equipped to create: the paradise with knowledge neither of good and evil nor of past and future that dance and choreography can sustain.

And though many ballets do contain intimations of grief and tragedy, it often seems that what dance does best is to give an image of fulfillment in action. There are examples from Astaire to Tharp, from Balanchine to Taylor, but before all of these a choreographic master of bliss was the Danish August Bournonville (1805-79), contemporary and friend of Hans Christian Andersen. He created full-length ballets that hold dark as well as light, but he argued that tragic emotion should be represented by acting, gesture, mime, whereas dancing expressed joy.

Not joy unvaried, but seen in many lights. In the current program presented at Jacob’s Pillow by the soloists of the Royal Danish Ballet (renewing a Copenhagen-Pillow connection that goes back to 1955), the two most substantial dances are the excerpts from Act II of “La Sylphide” (1836) and Act III of “Napoli” (1842). In the earlier work, joy is altogether tinged with frustration: the Scottish hero, James, is as exasperated that he cannot hold his ethereal sylph as he is thrilled to be dancing with her and her sisters.

In the later piece, joy is the achievement of a whole Neapolitan community, the ebullience of Italian high spirits, colored by competitiveness, flirtation, cooperation, modesty — a stage world in which each individual becomes steadily more distinct as a character, even while the overall mood keeps giddily climbing.

@New York Times, 2007