Dance & Music Reviews : Royal Danes Dance a Farewell ‘Napoli’

With an American flag waved atop the “Napoli” wedding cart, the Royal Danish Ballet said goodby to Southern California at the Performing Arts Center on Sunday.

This was also the final complete “Napoli” for company principal Nikolaj Hubbe before he joins New York City Ballet, and even those familiar with his high-Romantic fervor in the Bournonville repertory had cause to find it a special occasion.

Hubbe danced Gennaro at the premiere of this 150th-anniversary staging of “Napoli” in Copenhagen at the end of March. It was a great performance then--and it has improved. The playful, often sensual interaction with Teresina--Heidi Ryom--now softens to a ravishing tenderness and the explosions at Peppo and Giacomo convey murderous fury right up through those characters’ expulsion in Act III.

On Sunday, Hubbe also used Gennaro’s intensity to fuel his bravura dancing, giving the audience a fiery, unpredictable Tarantella loaded with spectacular experiments in impetus and timing that re-energized an already electric ensemble. With his hair darkened for the role, Hubbe resembled the young Edward Villella, a City Ballet firebrand of another era. The implications for American dance could be very fortuitous.

Although Ryom’s dancing looked dry and underpowered in the celebratory finale of the ballet, she brought greater dramatic insight and detail to the newly choreographed Blue Grotto act than had either previous Teresina here.

Her skill as a mime yielded many original touches in this act and the adagio with Golfo (Arne Villumsen) proved especially artful, with Ryom using the choreography to define the character’s complex response to the powerful new feelings engulfing her.

If Dinna Bjoern’s version is to survive as the standard text of Act II, it will need interpretations as imaginative and as skillfully executed as Ryom’s. But the big question is when we’re going to see this company again.