Danes in Uproar Over Ballet School

It’s been a bad year for the Royal Danish Ballet--starting with dancer defections, negative reviews and other problems related to the controversial directorship of Peter Schaufuss, who resigned at the end of June. A month earlier had come the death of the great dancer, coach and director Henning Kronstam, which heightened the feeling that company traditions were at risk.

Now comes news that the renowned, 224-year-old company school will soon be privatized and ballet-children moved away from the Royal Theatre for most of the school day.

The decision affects 56 boys and girls between 6 and 16 who learn both dancing and the academic subjects mandated by Danish law. The latter will now be taught 20 minutes away by bus, and children, who must pass auditions as well as exams, will pay tuition for the first time (about $160 per month per child). However, the widespread consternation over the announcement has focused more on artistic issues.

As Anne Flindt Christensen wrote in the Copenhagen daily newspaper Information, “All of the Royal Danish Ballet--the dancers, the dance style, the repertory--gets affected when somebody tries to change the base of the company: the ballet school.”

Holding all classes at the Royal Theatre, she explained, allows students to “get to know the atmosphere of the theater and the unwritten rules of the art of the stage, [and] to follow mature artists from all performance arts (ballet, opera, drama) as closely as possible.”

A letter from the president of the parents’ committee, Torben Thilsted, complained that the announcement took those involved by surprise and warned that the move represents “the destruction of the special conditions of the ballet school and the character of an arts education.”

The plans are also “creating anxiety about the future of the company among the dancers,” wrote Lotte Bichel in Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen’s largest daily. “They refer to several principals and soloists who probably would never have come to the Royal Theatre ballet school if the parents had to pay for it,” she said.

Attempts to interview Royal Theatre general director Michael Christiansen on the matter were unsuccessful.