Dance Candor

The Royal Danish Ballet is one of dance's most venerable institutions. With a 200-year history, the Danes claim the oldest continuous tradition in ballet, except for the Paris Opera, and their dancers are renowned for crisp footwork and ineffable lightness. They still have a few surprises tucked away, however, as audiences at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center learned last week when the visiting company unveiled Choreographer Flemming Flindt's Triumph of Death--and even undressed a few of the dancers.

"If you take the sensuous, corporeal expression away from dance, it becomes stuffy," says Copenhagen-born Flindt, 39, the company's artistic director. Little danger of anyone calling Flindt stuffy. The Lesson, his choreographic debut, was a startlingly effective piece about a psychopathic ballet master. Although Flindt has kept the cherished classics like La Sylphide and Napoli well polished, he has introduced the "modern feet" of Paul Taylor and Murray Louis. Trying to inject more reality in Danish ballet, he decided on a more sexual, dynamic, aggressive approach. One result was Triumph of Death, inspired by Ionesco's play Jeux de Massacre. When word leaked that it called for nudity, many feared for the Danes' long heritage of restrained artistry. Never before had a major classical ballet incorporated total nudity in dance.

Flindt's doomsday piece documents the death of a small town--or perhaps the end of the world--to a rather syrupy, amiably melodic pop-rock score by Thomas Koppel. Shrouded in a black plastic mantle, Death stalks, pointing, closing doors, and in general mopping up human fallout from air pollution. In one scene a rich man strips and frantically slathers his body in red disinfectant. The much-vaunted nude orgy takes place in a boutique where women tussle greedily over clothes and jewels. It occupies about four of the work's 80 minutes.

Pulse Beats.

In Denmark this balletic theater of the absurd is said to draw an enthusiastic young audience. Certainly it is harmless, if overly long. Those who really want to sample typical Danish dancing are better advised to see Flindt's imaginative choreography in the leafy setting of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

The Danish dancers fly and sweep through space in broad arcs. Yet they are totally unlike the flashy, athletic Russians of the Bolshoi or Kirov ballets. The Danish presentation is modest rather than showy. Dancing the role of Winter, Mette Ho/nningen--her arms gently curved and her shoulders very straight--gazed directly at the audience and glided through intricate patterns of quick, tiny steps that flowed like pulse beats. This is the true Danish style--a soft, romantic candor. It traces its roots to French ballet and is a legacy of August Bournonville, the chief designer of the Danes' classic technique, who studied in Paris before being appointed the Danish ballet master in 1830.

Some of his works are still preserved in the repertory. The third act of Napoli, the best-loved Bournonville ballet, is a showcase of solos, duets and ensembles of sparkling virtuosity. Napoli is in dance's derriere garde. No one disrobes. The Danes perform the work just as His Majesty's troupe first presented it 134 years ago. Americans, who have survived go-go dancers, Hair and Haight-Ashbury--a million years ago, it seems--will find it refreshing. And no one could possibly do it quite the way the Danes do.

Joan Downs

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