‘Rock star’ behind ballet
Nikolaj Hübbe also performs in La Sylphide Greats from Bruhn to Nureyev have claimed role here
La Sylphide is a ballet that has leaped into the hearts of Toronto audiences.
Erik Bruhn first brought the August Bournonville piece to the National Ballet of Canada. On Dec. 31, 1964, Bruhn opened in the part of James, the young gentleman Scot who enters a dream world in pursuit of a sylph, with the Royal Ballet’s Lynn Seymour. A few nights later, after Bruhn sustained an injury, his friend Rudolf Nureyev stunned Torontonians by stepping onto the O’Keefe stage — his first time in the role.
In August 1974, Mikhail Baryshnikov performed La Sylphide at Ontario Place’s open- air Forum for an adoring audience of 10,000, shortly after his defection from Russia.
Bruhn, a Dane and a rival to Nureyev as the greatest male dancer of his era, was only two or three generations removed from those who learned La Sylphide from Bournonville, who created the ballet in 1852. Now another great Dane, Nikolaj Hübbe of the New York City Ballet, has staged La Sylphide for the National Ballet. On Wednesday, Aleksandar Antonijevic and Xiao Nan Yu take on the tragic roles. On Thursday, Hübbe will reprise his signature James with Jennifer Fournier as La Sylphide.
This dancer thinks of James, not Swan Lake’s Prince Siegfried, as ballet’s Hamlet.
“ Ballet is full of heroes who are torn and men who go into different worlds,” says Hübbe. “I think James is more interesting than most.” The ballet is not so dark to him, more existential. James is drawn to his death, Hübbe thinks, “because you have to jump, to go where your heart tells you.” Hübbe was reared on Bournonville, the choreographer who made his unique ballets at the Royal Danish Ballet, where he spent nearly all his life until he died in 1879.
Trained in the Royal Danish school from the age of 9, Hübbe remembers first dancing James at a performance to celebrate Bruhn’s birthday, in the ’ 80s. “ I was 18 or 19,” he says, his Danish accent still faintly present.
For several weeks last month, as Hübbe rehearsed the National Ballet dancers to perform this new production of La Sylphide, word would go around the ballet centre on Queens Quay W. that “ the rock star” was in the building. With none of the swelled ego to match his nickname, Hübbe gives an explosive laugh when asked how soon he knew of his gift for ballet.
“ Gift? I had the desire. The desire was huge. Maybe the gift was the desire.” He joined the Royal Danish company in 1986 and earned a silver medal at the Paris Ballet Competition the same year. By the time he was 21, he was a principal dancer. Then in 1992, he joined New York City Ballet as a principal.
Aside from his regular appearances with the Manhattan company and guest roles elsewhere, Hübbe, 38, is a bearer of the Bournonville canon. He is frequently hired to coach dancers in the Bournonville technique and dramatic roles.
Conscious of the closeted tradition in Danish ballet that gives the choreography so much authenticity, Hübbe speaks of what it takes to make Bournonville’s 19th-century romanticism alive for a 2005 viewer.
“You don’t just say,
“ Oh we always did it
that way,’ ” he says.
“ You might, in terms of
the steps, but you don’t
have to think like they
always thought. Each
dancer has to think like
a different James or a
different Effie
( James’s fiancée).
“ The tradition is only good if you can make the next generation fall in love with it and be proud of it.”
In New York, Hübbe dances for Peter Martins, artistic director of the New York City Ballet and another Dane. The exchange that has gone on for most of the last century between Denmark and New York owes much to George Balanchine’s admiration for Bournonville. The founding creative director of New York City Ballet, says Hübbe, worked at the Royal Danish and brought his dances there. Balanchine, like Bournonville, “ could entertain with steps” and followed the Danish choreographer in making choreography known for its speed and delicate phrasing. Hübbe gives another guffaw at the mention of yet another go in the strenuous role of James. “ One time and one time only,” he jokes. “ Then I go straight to the hospital.”