Bournonville en Chine

[haydn]

Si la France a un peu oublie de célébrer le centenaire Bournonville, à 10000 km d'ici, la Chine, elle y a pensé, puisque La Sylphide et Napoli figurent en ce moment au programme du Ballet National de Chine, à Pékin. Certes, l'affiche n'est pas d'un style très orthodoxe...





Je crois que les danseurs chinois sont d'ailleurs conseillés par des membres du Ballet Royal du Danemark, qui entretient des relations assez étroites avec les compagnies asiatiques, mais Katharine Kanter pourrait peut-être nous en dire davantage à ce sujet.

[Enya]

These 2 ballets will be performed by National Ballet of China on January 21-23 at Tianqiao Theatre in Beijing, just a few days before Chinese Spring Festival on January 29.

Advertisement of the 2 ballets by media can be found at: http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/h/xiannv/ , sorry it's all in Chinese. There are also video clips of La Sylphide: http://ent.sina.com.cn/h/2005-11-17/1519899756.html , and Napoli: http://ent.sina.com.cn/h/2005-11-17/1519899756.html . Photoes can also be found there.

Zhang Jian:


Zhu Yan:


This is the 2nd time that NBC puts La Sylphide on stage. The 1st time was in September, 1999.

Mr Frank Andersen, the artistic director of Dannish Royal ballet, was invited to Beijing this Summer and helped NBC to rehearse La Sylphide. I think it will follow the traditional choreography of Bounonville very closely, unless Mr Frank Andersen brings his own adaptation to NBC. We could find it out soon in a month.

All the leading roles in La Sylphide will be performed by principal dancers of NBC, while the corps de ballet will be from Beijing Dance Academy.

Comme Haydn, I would also expect Katherine Kanter to talk more about this, as I guess she is very very familiar with Royal Dannish Ballet.

[lalouveblanche]

il faut rectifier les liens en enlevant les , et les .

[haydn]

Les liens sont arrangés et fonctionnent maintenant! Merci Enya et Lalouveblanche.

[Katharine Kanter]

Pour M. Enya,

en réponse à votre question, je ne suis pas en mesure d'ajouter à ce que vous avez dit. Si je ne me trompe, M. Andersen a été pendant dix ans - et je crois qu'il l'est encore - conseiller artistique du Ballet national de Chine.

Tout ce que je sais, c'est que le mot "Chine" déclenche un grand enthousiasme chez nos collègues danois - il semblerait que vos danseurs apprenent avec une rapidité fulgurante, et soient d'un temperament exhubérant et optimiste.

[Kevin Ng]

C'est vrai. M. Andersen a ete conseiller du Ballet National de Chine, avant son retour a Copenhagen devenir le directeur artistique du Royal Danish Ballet la deuxieme fois.

[Enya]

Thanks, Miss Katharine Kanter and Kevin.

Nice to meet you here, Kevin!

[Enya]

La Sylphide was put on stage for the 2nd time by the National Ballet of China together with Nappoli Act 3 at Beijing Tianqiao Theatre on Jan.21/22/23. I went to the performance on Jan.22.

La Sylphide

La Sylphide: Zhang Jian (Prima ballerina)
James : Li Jun (Principal dancer)
The Witch : Hao Bin (Soloist)
Effie : Liu Qi
Gurn : Li Nan
Mother of Effie: Li Ning (former Principal Dancer)
Corps de ballet: students from Beijing Dance Academy

I haven’t seen the full length of this version before, only seen part of Act 2 in a video danced by Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev of which the dance was adapted with Nureyev’s flavour. However, the music is quite familiar to me, that is because, most of the pieces of music used in RAD graded examination syllabus Grade 7 are extracted from this version. As for the ochestra of National Ballet of China, the essence of music was not properly conveyed, the speed, rhythm and emotion of music were not so supportive for dancing steps, especially the steps of James.

The choreography was a short and simplified one compared with the choreography of Pierre Lacotte after Philippe Taglioni, the total running time of this ballet was less than 90 minutes. In this choreography, Effie was not on point shoes at all; in Act 1, there was no Scotish Pad de Deux , no Grand Pas de Trois of La Sylphide, Effie and James; in Act 2, dance of the Sylphs was quite short and lack of variety in patterns. I’m just wondering if something was cut off from the original Bournonville’s choreography, not sure. However, the choreography followed Bournonville’s style very closely, costumes and sets were of traditional Scotish.

Before opening the curtain, in order to help the audience to understand this ballet better, Miss Feng Ying, the ballet master of the National Ballet of China gave a brief introduction to the plot, and made an explanation of some mimes used in this ballet with the help of principal dancers Zhang Jian (La Sylphide), Li Jun (James) and herself (the Witch).

I always think that Zhang Jian must be cherished by the Godness, because she possessed a perfect proportion and beautiful and elegant lines. As La Sylphide she was a quite delightful floating spririt, her steps and movements were stable, lithe and graceful as she usually is. Her arabesque penchee was so impressive, jetes were weightless and clean, her eloquent eyes made the mimes very expressive. But as for this version of La Sylphide, I think it was not enough to present her merit and develop her potentials, this was a pity.

Li Jun as James, although technically he had done it quite well, I felt that something was missing from his performance. His mimes were a little bit of formalism, therefore looked a little bit stiff. It seemed that he was not very nature and confortalbe to be with Bournonville’s typical “black steps”, i.e., those petites batteries – but this might be the result of ballet training system in China, it follows the traditions of Russian training system, like Russian male dancers, Chinese male dancers are more or less not very good at dealing with those petites batteries, compared with French and Dannish male dancers.

Although Hao Bin is still very yong, his presentation of the Witch was very interesting and vivid. What he could improve is that the Witch can be more odd and sinister.

And in this choreography, except the mimes, it seemed that there was not too much for Effie and Gurn to do in terms of dancing, that was something I felt disappointed.

Nappoli Act 3

Nappoli Act 3 was presented by students from Beijing Dance Acedemy, except two male variations were done by 2 Coryphees from the National Ballet of China, Wang Hao and Zhang Xiangyuan. It was a lively and happy scene, a report-back performance of students, or a demonstration of students, but we could not expect much more according to the level of performance done by professional dancers.

But still we could find several outstanding students who may become very good professional dancers in the future. They have just passed the entrance examination of the National Ballet of China and will start their career in the company very soon. One of the most outstanding students I would like to mention here is Cao Shuci, she won gold medal of junior group at Helsinki International Ballet Competition in May 2005. She took the leading role in this Nappoli Act 3, showed her potentials and talents as a good professional dancer in the future.

[sophia]

Thanks Enya for your interesting review of "La Sylphide" and "Napoli" act III in China. That sounds very astonishing to me, and probably to most of our french or european readers, to hear about Bournonville ballets reconstructed in China, "so far from Denmark"... Here in France, we would like to see Bournonville ballets, especially these two, the most famous ones, but we don't have any opportunity. How lucky you are!
You also seem to know Pierre Lacotte's version of "La Sylphide" danced by Paris Opera Ballet (I suppose you saw the DVD). So which one do you prefer? What are your feelings about these two versions?

[Kevin Ng]

Enya, did Zhu Yan dance La Sylphide on the first night? I saw this production by Frank Andersen in Hong Kong in 2000, and was very impressed by Zhu Yan at the time. Actually I prefer Miss Zhu to Zhang Jian as a classical ballerina.

[Enya]

To Sophia: yes, I saw the DVD of Lacotte’s version of “La Sylphide” danced by Paris Opera Ballet. For the choreograhphy, I have to say that I prefer Lacotte’s version rather than Bournonville’s, personnelly speaking. I guess if we trace back to original version of Philippe Taglioni, maybe it looked very different from Lacotte’s verion we see today, even Lacotte’s version is created based on Taglioni’s work. Lacotte’s version gives much more time and space to develop the plot, to tell the story, to develop different variations and divertissement, and to dig out the potentials of dancers as well as to demonstrate the merit of technique and performance of dancers. A very small regret is that in the DVD of “La Sylphide” of Paris Opera Ballet, the Scottish Pas de Deux could be done by a better male dancer.

For the performance of NBC, it was done by a combination of professional dancers and students, from the dancers’ stage performance experience point of view, the style looked quite different; from audience’s experience point of view, the visual spectacle didn’t look well harmonized as a whole. This gave quite a lot of “discount” to the performance. I’m wondering if it was totally done by the dancers of NBC, perhaps the result would be much better.

The National Ballet of China have quite good cooperations with Royal Dannish Ballet for many years, that’s why we could see Bournonville’s most famous choreographies be staged here in China. In addition to this, Royal Dannish Ballet has helped NBC to stage some other ballets, for example, Lander’s “Etude”, Per Isburg’s contemporary version of “Coppelia”. Per Isburg also created “Butterfly Lovers” for NBC according to his own understanding of this story and based on the very famous Chinese violin concerto of “Butterfly Lovers”. I like this version of “Butterfly Lovers” very much compared with many other choreograhphies based on Chinese classical dance technique, although many Chinese audience says that his choreography doesn’t follow the Chinese traditional story closely. I think sometimes breaking an existing old view is needed so that we could see more fresh works.

To Kevin: the dancers for the other day were: La Sylphide – Zhu Yan, James – Yu Bo, the Witch – Sun Jie.

There is a very interesting phenomenen in China, that ballet fans who have practiced ballet as amateurs for several years, most of them prefer Zhang Jian rather than Zhu Yan. That is because, Zhang Jian’s technique and style are more of acedemical and classical style, her steps and movements can be considered as models for ballet teaching, very standard with high quality, steady, lightness and ease, together with very beautiful lines. Several years ago, she was not so experienced in the area of drama performance therefore sometimes looked emotionless. But for the recent years, she has improved quite a lot, her drama performance becomes more and more mature and agreeable acoording to the requirement of each character. It’s a very relaxed experience to see Zhang Jian’s performance now.

Zhu Yan is also a very good ballerina, good at drama performance, sometimes too much. But, I don’t think her technique is as academic, classical and standard as Zhang Jian, she could do quite brilliant grands jetes or turns but sometimes her state is not stable, she could never finish a perfect echappe or a perfect arabesque enpenchee with good control, or those petit steps like Zhang Jian, but those techniques are part of the essence of classical ballet. Sometines Zhu Yan's steps are a little bit heavy. Many Chinese classical dancers and folk dancers can do much better and dazzling grand jetes and turns than ballet dancers. The main argument of ballet fans supporting Zhu Yan is mainly because that they think Zhu Yan looks more beautiful like a foreigner, but Zhang Jian is just Chinese looking, therefore they think that Zhu Yan is more suitable for dancing western classical ballets. But, is the apprearance of face the most important criteria for a classical ballet dancer? Personnally I think that is a total misleading information to those who don’t know much about classical ballet!

It’s Chinese New Year Eve today. In Chinese Luner calendar tomorrow is the Chinese Spring Festival, the first day of “the Year of Dog”. Hope you all a happy and prosperous Dog Year!