My teacher was Nina Stroganova, born Nina Rigmor Strom in Denmark, one of the great Danish ballerinas. After training in Denmark, she went to Paris to study with Olga Preobrajenska, and became a ballerina and Prima Ballerina in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Mordkin Ballet, Ballet Theater, the Original Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. She then performed Swan Lake Act II and Giselle in this very theater in Copenhagen in a Royal Command Performance. Her class was both Preobrajenska classical ballet, and Danish, with LOTS of jumping.
Rather than creating a style, what Bournonville did was preserve the old French manner of dancing, which is how they danced at the Paris Opera and also the Mariinsky before the introduction of the Italian technique, which Bournonville disliked. This in no way detracts from his achievements because his original choreography is genius, and his Days of the Week enchainements taught at the Royal Danish Ballet School to this day little masterpieces. But the fact is that if you want to see pure 19th century French classical dancing you have to look at Bournonville, not Lifar or Lacotte, and certainly not Nureyev.
Wasn't the Days of the Week Cechetti? I am not really an aficionado just someone who is very interested and only recently got into learning about ballet. (I am going to have to look up the other names I haven't heard in French, Lifar or Lacotte or Nureyev)
Not just Bournonville, but anything of Massine, anything from the Ballets Russes companies, who all trained in Paris with teachers from pre-Soviet Russia.
Niclai Hubbe is in his persond a wonderful example to see Bournonville style - when he is on stage - bringing power and elegance in harmony together: the male dancers. The most wemon love this dancers because they are chevelaresk and sexy!
She was a lovely ballerina, I saw her with Nureyev, and in class with Nina Stroganova. Sadly, she had to hunt for dancing work later in her career.@@clarissaleung4509
No it's not. The two are unconparable. Although there is a superficial resemblance in a few allegro steps, no one with any knowledge of ballet would ever have made that statement. The artestry and athleticism of these ballet dancers could NEVER be achieved by Highland training.
Scottish Highland dancing was revived and taught by a ballet-trained teacher in the early part of the 20thC. I once had the pleasure of watching a video of a dance conference with Joan Flett, who wrote about earlier Scottish dance styles before they disappeared, overshadowed by the over stylised competitive dances, as collected in the Highlands by her husband Tom Flett (their books are excellent). She watched a country dance where the dancers were spread out and did elongated steps and said that it had been collected in a farmhouse kitchen, with neat, but much smaller movements - and also a highland step dance also collected by the Fletts. The modern dancer emphasised the pointed toes, held out her skirts and sprung across the space - and again Joan commented that it was neat and lively when collected in a limited space and without over-extended feet or skirt-holding, but ballet influences had changed that delicate form to what had now become the standard, as demonstrated in the limited competition programmes. There are also works by George Emerson on the history and papers from a 1980s conference on this topic.
