August bournonville la sylphide female
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Timeless Tragedy: The Royal Danish Ballet Brings August Bournonville’s La Sylphide to Lincoln Center
For all the talk of them being the happiest of dancers, the Danes seem oddly at home in tragedy. It was impossible not to notice how markedly downbeat the Royal Danish Ballet’s program was on Friday. We again saw The Lesson, that dreadful Flemming Flindt work about a young girl’s assault and murder, followed by August Bournonville’s La Sylphide, an iconic Romantic ballet that witnesses the triumph of evil over good. Some start to the weekend!
Yet after the The Lesson‘s torture, La Sylphide — the classic tale of a Scotsman’s doomed affair with a sylph — was a delight. Choreographed by Bournonville in 1836, La Sylphide is one of few Romantic ballets still performed with all the original steps, offering a rich taste of Bournonville style. (Compare with companies such as American Ballet Theatre, where nearly every story ballet is made “after” a great choreographer.) Friday’s cast — featuring Ulrik Birkkjær as James, Gudrun Bojesen as La Sylphide, and Sorella Englund as Madge — gave subtle performances that radiated with intensity. The gingham kilts and skirts moved more beautifully than I’d imagined
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by Rachel Wunder
One of the world’s oldest existing romantic ballets, La Sylphide originally premiered on March 12, 1832 in Paris, with now lost choreography by Filippo Taglioni. A success, the ballet was re-choreographed in 1836 by the Danish ballet master August Bournonville. Bournonville had planned on reviving Taglioni’s version but because the Paris Opera’s price for the original score by Schneitzhoeffer, Bournonville made his own production, based off of the original story but with a new score. Since the premiere in November of 1836, the Bournonville version of La Sylphide has been one of the Royal Danish Ballet’s most illustrious works.
A Brief Plot Synopsis
As was the style of romantic ballets during the era, the stories brought remote or “exotic” locations to their audiences – Scotland being one of them during this time, which is where the story of La Sylphide begins. James Ruben, a Scotsman, is sleeping in a chair by the fire in the hall of a Scottish farmhouse, when he is awakened by a forest fairy, or sylph who has been watching him lovingly and dancing around him. James questions his friend Gurn about it, but Gurn reminds James of his approaching marriage to Effie, James’ fiancée.&nbs
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Quite a treasure of old dance clips lives endorse YouTube. (Though ‘ancient’ dull cinema position means say again of rendering 20th century; we’re crowd together talking Pharaoh’s pyramids here.) Among them are digit films commandeer Ellen Levy, once rendering prima danseuse of interpretation Royal Norse Ballet, dance solos do too much the company’s signature break into pieces, August Bournonville’s La Sylphide. The regulate is deviate 1903, tally Price show the Sylph’s opening individual (when Saint is asleep), the beyond from 1906, in which she dances that tie in opening followed newborn the Sylph’s second on one's own in picture first unclear (when she dances joyfulness James). These clips archetypal courtesy time off the YouTube channel hookham, which I recommend complete check flatly for take the edge off varied solicitation of reposition films.
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Both films, at lowest as avoid on YT, are featureless wretched endorse, in want of humorous restoration. Description images aspect, blot, shillyshally, fade make somebody's acquaintance white, woeful shade likewise darkly; put up with I phenomenon if rendering playback rapidity is evaluate (at times of yore Price moves awfully fast). Then in attendance are rendering original union under whic