Post-Ballet Crowd Orders More Danish

Saying the Royal Danish Ballet came to Orange County Performing Arts Center because it received “an offer it couldn’t refuse--a wish to have us here,” ballet director Frank Andersen joined about 300 guests for the post-performance party on Tuesday that celebrated the company’s first visit to the West Coast in more than two decades.

“I think it’s strange that we haven’t been back in 27 years,” Andersen said at Birraporetti’s restaurant after the U.S. premiere of the 150th anniversary production of “Napoli.” “But I will do anything I can do to make sure we come back again to Segerstrom Hall. We love it.”

The troupe’s next stop: the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Also rubbing elbows in a dining room flooded with roses, balloons and tiny replicas of the Danish flag were Danish Ambassador Peter Dyvig (who came from Washington for the affair--”I love coming to California; it’s still a dream world for Europeans,” he said) and Grethe Rostboll, Denmark’s minister of culture. Both presided over a pre-performance reception at the Center Club for Center activists and Danish dignitaries.

At Birraporetti’s, Rostboll--who sat at a table with arts benefactor Henry T. Segerstrom and his wife, Renee--noted that the “Napoli” ballet was choreographed by Danish ballet master August Bournonville in 1842.

“The production you saw tonight (staged by Andersen) was performed in March in Copenhagen at a festival celebrating his 150th anniversary,” she said. “It is quite new, and it was made for that festival and our United States tour.”

Principal dancer Lis Jeppesen, 36, pronounced Segerstrom Hall “huge, amazing.”

The secret to the zest she brings to the role of the young Teresina? “To love to dance,” Jeppesen said. “To be a human being who is not thinking too much about technique, how high you can kick, but the person you are portraying in the performance.”

Ballet soloist Christina Olsson, 24, found being in Segerstrom Hall “a little strange.”

“Compared to our very old theater in Copenhagen, I felt like I was in a space museum,” she said. “Those lights! It was very impressive. And there were so many people.”

After arriving at the party, guests plucked glasses of wine and champagne from silver trays and helped themselves to a buffet repast that included steaming hot pizza, lasagna, chicken quesadillas, pesto tortellini with almonds and chicken Alfredo.

“I loved the third act,” said Henry Segerstrom, who chose a glass of red wine to accompany his slice of pizza. “It was so lively and colorful.”

Swooned Renee Segerstrom, “The whole performance: fantastic!”

Also among guests: Center president Thomas Kendrick, who with Center manager Judy Morr attended the Bournonville Festival in Copenhagen in March, 1991 (“What this performance says about Orange County is that it has seen one of the greatest ballet companies of the world on its stage,” Kendrick said. “They’re right up there with the Kirov, the Paris Opera Ballet and Royal Ballet of Great Britain”); Les Reimann, consul general of Denmark; Mary Jones, Orange County chief of protocol; Lois and Buzz Aldrin; Paul Steffensen with Jo Ellen Qualls; Michele Rohe, and Mary Roosevelt.

* BALLET REVIEW

By Martin Bernheimer. F1