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Hard parts
Repertory at Boston Conservatory
BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL

The pre-professional dancers at Boston Conservatory got a workout last weekend in their winter concert of repertory in three totally different styles. They seemed to be up to the technical challenges; the stylistic subtleties were harder to conquer. What makes a Bournonville ballet different from La Fille Mal Gardée, for instance, or Swan Lake or Serenade? How to define the individuality that modern dancers like Murray Louis and José Limón cultivated for themselves?

August Bournonville, the great 19th-century Danish choreographer, is comparatively unfamiliar to the American ballet audience. The extant Bournonville repertory, still preserved in the Royal Danish Ballet, is noted for a geographic diversity that affords opportunities for dancing in many folk styles. But its main distinction is its detailed and understated classicism, a subtlety that often dissolves in the homogenized brilliance of contemporary ballet’s post–Petipa/Ivanov idiom.

Bournonville’s ballets celebrate merchants and craftsmen, soldiers, fishermen and wanderers, the comforts of domesticity and religion, the virtues of friendship and diligence — not the panoply and intrigue of royal dynasties. All the Bournonville ballets I’ve seen bear the message that commoners, not princes and swans, are the most marvelous dancers.

A great traveler in a country that took pride in its seafaring adventures, Bournonville created Napoli after a trip to Italy, and it was the third-act Pas de Six and Tarantella that Boston Conservatory performed under the direction of Laura Young. This all-dance showpiece is the culmination of a love story with supernatural complications and a very happy ending. The principal couple and their friends join in a communal dance that starts with some specialty duets, trios, and solos, then expands into a euphoric 12-person folk dance spinning out new games and flirtations for everyone.

As the Pas de Six begins, we understand right away that Bournonville avoided the erotic partner work the Russians specialized in. Two men stroll and leap with a woman companion on each arm. When the music slows down and you’d expect supported balances and lifts, the two sets of women partner each other, then the men dance side by side. The dancing, here and in the seven solo variations that follow, exploits intricate footwork and space-covering jumps. One male variation calls for contrasting speeds, as the dancer alternates between a series of jumps and a blur of quick running steps. Women balance on pointe, but they often have to lean or even spring out of the secure vertical.

The music (by Helsted, Gade, and Paulli) is bouncy and, for the Tarantella, irrepressibly fluent. Instead of always riding its regular rhythms, the choreography calls for pauses, suspensions, even syncopations. For the dancers, the pitfalls are tremendous: they have to regulate their timing so they don’t finish a phrase too soon, or land in a dead stop, or wobble while waiting for the music to catch up. Bournonville’s rhythmic variability and the constant supply of new step combinations keep the Tarantella from becoming repetitious. Unfortunately for the dancers and the audience, the music was played on tape.

Laura Young, who danced Bournonville as a principal with Boston Ballet under the Danish master régisseurs Hans Brenaa, Kirsten Ralov, and Dinna Bjørn, acknowledges the difficulty and even strangeness of Bournonville for the Conservatory dancers. " It’s great for dancers to tackle different styles, " she told me. " They become aware of their bodies in a different way. "

José Limón’s Choreographic Offering (1964) was his tribute to his teacher and mentor Doris Humphrey. Resident faculty member Jennifer Scanlon directed the work, which is set to Bach’s Musical Offering, here played by the Boston Conservatory Orchestra under guest conductor James Orent. Originally made for 28 dancers (Scanlon adroitly managed to fit 22 on the Conservatory stage), the work arranges movements from Humphrey’s dances in varying choral patterns.

The Humphrey-Limón style sends the body into weighted, sculptural shapes so that both the individual dancers and the massed traveling groups seem to devour space. The dance is very long, around 40 minutes, and risks becoming all one tone, but it takes heart from Bach’s inexhaustible ability to invent variations on a theme.

Boston Conservatory dance concerts usually feature live music, and for Murray Louis’s Schubert Suite the Trout Quintet was delightfully played by Markus Placci (violin), So Ki (viola), Agnieszka Dziubak (cello), Chris Johnson (bass), and Roxana Bajdechi (piano). The music seemed to encourage the eight dancers to resist punching at Louis’s movement — eccentricities like kinky angles, small shudders, limbs stretched and flexed in unpredictable directions, and ordinary behavior timed with the music. With Louis, the less effort that goes into the switches, the funnier it is.

Issue Date: February 27 - March 6, 2003
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