Out of Step? : Peter Schaufuss’ staging of ‘La Sylphide’ has been criticized on questions of taste, style and tone--so has his reign as artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet.

Nothing in this world lasts forever, least of all the fleeting apparitions of the stage.

--August Bournonville, 1879

Aug. 18, 1960: the Los Angeles debut of the Royal Danish Ballet, a company legendary for its refinement--and for the largest collection of antique ballets anywhere. Perhaps the best loved is the centerpiece of the opening program at the Greek Theatre this night: August Bournonville’s “La Sylphide,” handed down from one generation to the next since its premiere in 1836.

On the stage during the first act ensemble of “La Sylphide” is 11-year-old Peter Schaufuss, watched by his famous dancing RDB parents, the lyrical Mona Vangsaae and the virile Frank Schaufuss.

The image is endearing: The family that stays together, ballets together. But by the end of the decade, Schaufuss the Younger will have joined and then left the Royal Danish Ballet, for a restless career as a stellar principal in companies located in London, New York and Toronto as well as an internationally celebrated guest artist.

Flash-forward to 1979, the year of the epochal first Bournonville Festival in Copenhagen--a living gallery of all his surviving ballets. That year, the RDB production “La Sylphide” passes into the custody of the great Danish danseur noble Henning Kronstam, who periodically restages it through 1992--when it receives a triumphant reception at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

But 1979 holds another “Sylphide”-related career milestone: Peter Schaufuss’ first staging of the work, for the company now known as the English National Ballet. Schaufuss calls it a turning point in his life:

“When I was asked to do it, I was just a dancer in London,” he says, “and it was instrumental, I think, in my being asked to be the director of English National Ballet.”

Now flash-forward again to 1994. After stormy directorships in London and Berlin, Schaufuss becomes the head of the Royal Danish Ballet and begins his regime by replacing the Henning Kronstam “La Sylphide” with his own 1979 staging. It is that version that will open the company’s return engagement at Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday: a version controversial in itself and part of a wider, deeper controversy over Schaufuss’ leadership.

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In American dance these days, controversy usually arises from sex, nudity or p.c. agendas. However, the debate over Schaufuss’ “La Sylphide” focuses on questions of taste, style and tone and their effect upon narrative issues. In the old version, for example, the Scottish hero, James, lives in a relatively modest farmhouse. Some observers feel he has moved to a palatial manor in Schaufuss’ staging. Makes a difference . . .

To expand the roles of the five main characters, Schaufuss uses music long ago cut from the score, making his version some 18 minutes longer than the Kronstam edition. Some of the inserted passages qualify as genuine restorations of what Bournonville wanted, others clearly reflect 20th-Century priorities: a new, sensitive-young-man solo for James, for example.

The very mixed Copenhagen reviews concentrate less on the interpolations than the effect of the production as a whole. “No matter that there may be some old theater dust on the old ‘Sylphide,’ ” wrote Monna Dithmer DATE TK in the large, influential newspaper Politiken. “With the right cast it takes off with an alluring force. The new version, in spite of its strong bid on the character of James and the conflict between dream and reality, looks like a ‘Sylphide’ in a party dress: beautiful but without character.”

Within the company, too, opinion has been divided. American-born principal Lloyd Riggins will be dancing the role of James on Wednesday in Costa Mesa but says “it’s difficult to do this new version because the other was, I think, just so brilliant. It left a bit up to the imagination of the spectator which I feel established a sense of trust between the company and its public.”

“The new version doesn’t really go any deeper. It just makes black and white, plain as day, what the conflicts are. I think there’s a certain lack of finesse in it.”

Riggins has danced more major Bournonville roles than any American in Royal Danish Ballet history--in fact, more major Bournonville roles than Schaufuss did during his Copenhagen career. He speaks of the new version as “kind of an outside approach, coming from a Russian training and trying to put the [Danish] style on top.”

But the deepest controversy reportedly comes more from Schaufuss’ working style than his choreographic style. The new artistic director had his “Sylphide” taught to the company by a British choreologist working from notation, which immediately alienated some of the best RDB dancers by locking them into specifics they didn’t understand.

“I don’t care whose version of ‘La Sylphide’ it is . . . ,” Riggins says. “The individual has to be comfortable with the character so that the audience can then believe it. You can’t just do something that’s illogical to you because somebody says, ‘Do it!,’ and doesn’t explain it to you.”

Schaufuss’ failure to explain his purposes reportedly alienated both his first-cast dancers (who felt oppressed with details) and the rest of the principals (who have charged him with absenteeism). “I begged him to come to ‘La Sylphide’ rehearsal--to come and help me,” says the virtuosic Alexander Koelpin. “But he never came to a single one.” Koelpin is widely acclaimed in Denmark for his portrayal of James and danced the role frequently this season. In Orange County, however, he has been cast as Gurn. “I’m not so popular these days I think,” he comments with a grim laugh.

As the ‘94-95 season continued, the charge of communication problems became a central complaint of many of the dancers. “Peter is incapable of communicating directly with us and maybe giving us some background information on what he really thinks about things,” says Kenneth Greve, the majestic dancer who earlier this month represented the RDB in the San Francisco dance festival honoring the signing of the U.N. Charter. “If he wants to ease the situation, maybe he should try to appreciate us a little more, appreciate what there is in Denmark, not before he left but what there is now.”

“The atmosphere is not full of life or optimism,” says Sorella Englund, the incomparable Madge of the 1992 Orange County “Sylphide” performances. “It’s quite sad. In the beginning, they [the dancers] were all afraid and now they just somehow . . there’s no enthusiasm, it’s apathetic. It doesn’t look so good.”

Other RDB dancers confirm these observations--some speaking only under conditions of anonymity. “Peter Schaufuss is retaliatory,” explains one young principal. “If you say something about him, you are going to feel it for as long as he can possibly make you feel it.”

Schaufuss himself smoothly minimizes any notion of con troversy about either his working methods or his “La Sylphide” production.

“In a place where you have an old tradition with a choreographer who has been long, long, long dead,” he says, “if you have a hundred people, then you have a hundred experts and they all think differently. It’s very difficult to channel all that knowledge into more or less one direction. And this is one of my impossible jobs here: to try and do that.”

He describes his “Sylphide” as merely “a new edition that continues the tradition.” “I’m not saying it’s authentic because nothing is authentic since the very first performance,” he says. “The [1992] production is certainly not authentic either.”

In the same manner, he dismisses the morale problems within the company as “very, very minor compared to what happens in other places after a change of directorship.”

“If you agreed on everything with your artists, that would not be a very healthy situation,” he says, assuming a stance as Great Communicator markedly at odds with his attitude as described by nearly everyone else:

“I think as long as you have a dialogue and as long as you can discuss things and as long as you can channel the direction into reality and as long as the possibilities outweigh the problems, I think you have a very positive situation.”

Granted, every new director faces a period of adjustment at the beginning of a regime--but the controversy over Schaufuss has intensified in recent months. “Bad Working Climate Threatens Ballet Season,” headlined the large daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende in a March report, summarizing the problems to date:

“During his first season as artistic director, Peter Schaufuss has been forced to cancel more than half of his premieres. He has also run into trouble working with the administrative director, Michael Christiansen, and the dancers. . . .”

A month later, the same paper reported that the dancers’ union had sent an official letter of complaint to Schaufuss about his treatment of them. And earlier this month, Berlingske Tidende revealed that a second letter of complaint indicated that no progress had been made.

Even some of Schaufuss’ strongest defenders in the company now question his performance as director. “I can only say that I was very much for Peter Schaufuss and I’m really sorry if it’s not working,” declares ballerina Lis Jeppesen, who scored more than one success with the company in Orange County three years ago.

She faults Schaufuss for communication problems and wonders whether he’s afraid of the company. “I don’t know what it is, but he has difficulty talking with people,” she says. “I think he should maybe be more free in his instructions. It’s my opinion. Maybe it’s because he’s unsure of himself or something like that.”

Jeppesen also confirms the reports of trouble between Schaufuss and the administration at the Royal Theatre. “I don’t think that [theater chief] Michael Christiansen and Peter agree on many questions,” she says, “and when we are not satisfied with Peter, then Michael Christiansen can use that.”

Jeppesen says that she doesn’t understand why she wasn’t cast in any Orange County performances, but she also says that her regrets about Schaufuss aren’t about personal matters. “I’m treated very properly by Peter,” she underlines, “He’s very nice to me.”

And the preeminent Sylphide of her generation makes it clear she knows the difference. To describe Schaufuss’ predecessor, Frank Andersen, she invokes the four-letter synonym for excrement, speaking so vehemently that you imagine the wings on her back shriveling up, scorched and blistered. Clearly, no ballet director has an easy time--at any company.

Nor is Schaufuss a stranger to controversy. Early in 1990, he was suddenly fired as artistic director of English National Ballet due, officially, to “irreconcilable differences” with the board of governors. A deficit estimated at 350,000, IN DOLLARS?? poor communication with dancers and estrangement from management were cited as central issues in British press reports at the time.

The situation may sound similar to the recent Copenhagen newspaper stories, but Royal Theater administrative director Michael Christiansen disagrees. He insists, for example, that he has “absolutely no complaint at all” about Schaufuss’ money management; indeed, he says that this first year in Schaufuss’ seven-year contract has ended securely in the black.

Christiansen also denies as “nonsense” the reports that there is tension between he and Schaufuss.

“The only thing that I would say is that Peter Schaufuss had ambitions when he came to do more ballets with less rehearsals, in a more tight way than we had done before,” Christiansen explains. “It was not possible. And I will tell you that I have definitely agreed on every single [ballet] cancellation that he has made. We have agreed over the season that these cancellations were necessary because he was too ambitious. I want him to be ambitious and he is ambitious, but sometimes ambition takes you too far and that is what happened. But now we are back on track.”

And the letters of complaint? “You will have to ask the dancers about that,” Christiansen answers. But dancer-union chief Peter Bo Bendixen says he is under orders not to comment.He won’t even offer an answer when he’s asked if he is personally happier as a dancer now than he was under the previous regime.

Others are answering that question by leaving the company. Alexander Koelpin will be dancing for Maurice Bejart all next year (officially on leave-of-absence)--one of a reported seven RDB dancers leaving Copenhagen permanently or absenting themselves from Schaufuss’ second season. Kenneth Greve says he has applied for a dozen absences of his own to appear with other companies--including the Kirov Ballet.

“This season I have danced very, very little,” Greve says, “and I have made these [guest] contacts as a precaution because I don’t want to sit and waste another year.”

Riggins is simply quitting and will be a member of the Hamburg Ballet from now on. “We feel, my wife and I, that if we stay one more season with the company, that next year we’ll be even more negative and our work will start being affected by it and the atmosphere around us with our friends--and even maybe our private life,” he says. “We want to be part of a productive atmosphere.”

When outsiders ponder the influence of an artistic director on a great company, contradictions can seem as significant as official statements. Sorella Englund may feel sad and confused over Schaufuss’ neglect of her this season, but even she insists that “every ballet master should have artistic freedom. I will always respect that. If they don’t want me and my doing on stage, it’s fine . . .”

In the spirit of the artistic freedom that Englund prizes so highly, the last word on the current state of the Royal Danish Ballet properly belongs to Schaufuss. Unfortunately, Schaufuss canceled a follow-up interview scheduled to explore his response to the specific complaints from inside and outside the company. His reason: He didn’t think controversy belonged in the piece.

His preliminary interview definitely accentuated the positive, especially his commitment to new works: five full-length premieres by Danish choreographers scheduled for his second season. And Schaufuss even managed to be positive about a staging of Bournonville’s “A Folk Tale” from the Andersen regime--one dropped into the OCPAC engagement when his own production of Frederick Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet” joined this season’s list of cancellations.

“The sets and costumes are made by the Queen of Denmark,” he said. “I think it’s important in relation to the name Royal Danish Ballet. This is really a royal ballet company because all the royals have been personally interested in us.”

And the staging itself? “It’s different--not as different as my ‘La Sylphide’ to some people--but it looks very different from the last production. And the last production looked very different from the one that was before that.”

The bottom line: “I think you will find when you see the company in Orange County that it’s a very well-dancing company,” Schaufuss said, “and perhaps you will find them dancing even better than the last time.

“In the end of the day, I think what’s going on when the curtain goes up is what’s the most important thing and one should always try to focus on that. That’s when it all counts. Because in the end of the day, we’re doing this for an audience, not for ourselves.”

* The Royal Danish Ballet dances “La Sylphide” Tuesday-Thursday and “A Folk Tale” Friday-next Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. All performances are at 8 p.m. except the final one, scheduled for 2 p.m. Tickets: $20-$70. (714) 740-2000.