A remarkable legacy
Dinna Bjørn brings a graceful tradition to Milwaukee Ballet’s ‘La Sylphide’
Students of the performing arts can learn a lot about their art through a combination of reading, watching and listening. But mastery of an art form requires thoughtful, in-person teaching and coaching, often in a one-on-one setting, passing artistry and tradition from one generation to the next.
When the curtain rises April 6 on the Milwaukee Ballet’s production of “La Sylphide,” audiences will see the fruits of a remarkable ballet legacy that dates back to 1836.
“La Sylphide” was premiered in Paris in 1832, in a production created by Filippo Taglioni. Danish ballet master August Bournonville created his own production of the ballet in 1836, for the Royal Danish Ballet.
Danish choreographer Dinna Bjørn, who has been working with MB dancers for several weeks as répétiteur for “La Sylphide,” has a background with the work that is part training and tradition, and part family.
“I knew the ‘La Sylphide’ music already when I was a child — before I danced in it — because I went to the theater and saw my father dance in it,” she said, referring to her father Niels Bjørn Larsen’s career as a dancer with the RDB. She later danced with the company, performing in “La Sylphide” with her father.
Bjørn is teaching MB dancers the RDB’s “La Sylphide” choreography, the most faith- ful of all productions worldwide to the 1836 Bournonville original in both steps and style.
The RDB kept the Bournonville production in its repertoire for many years and continues to remount it frequently, using Bournonville’s choreography, as well as his iconic style of dance. The company views itself, and the world shares that view, as the world’s principal upholder of the “La Sylphide”/Bournonville traditions.
Bjørn, who has served as répétiteur for about 25 productions of the ballet around the world, said the style of dance is as important as the choreography in presenting a faithful staging of Bournonville’s work.
“The vocabulary is classical ballet,” Bjørn said, explaining that the Russian, English and French ballet styles all use the same steps.
But Bournonville’s style featured more rounded, fluid, lower arms than the Russian and English styles of the time. It closely resembled the French ballet style, which had already disappeared by the time he was setting “La Sylphide.”
“Bournonville was very, very influenced by French style,” Bjørn said. “He was half French and studied in France. That style has been kept alive, through him, in Copenhagen.”
Bjørn described the Bournonville style, saying, “The arms are a bit more rounded, more gentle and delicate (than other styles). This is not a flamboyant style — it’s not about showing off. It’s about natural grace and delicacy, and inviting and including the audience.”
For MB leading artist Luz San Miguel, who will dance the title role in some performances, learning Bournonville’s choreography was like visiting her ballet roots.
“Bournonville was my schooling in Spain, so learning this ballet was polishing something I knew when I was young, like coming back to my old ways,” she said, adding that the choreography is full of “very intricate footwork and difficult jumps, but the arms are very quiet. It is very intimate.”
San Miguel is currently a leading artist with the MB and also a ballet master, in which role working on “La Sylphide” takes on particular importance. “Working with Dinna Bjørn is like winning the lottery,” San Miguel said. “I can listen to her and learn from her, and absorb as much as she will give me. It’s like a present given to me for my future as a ballet mistress.”
MB leading artist Nicole Teague-Howell, who will also dance the title role, said, “Working with Dinna Bjørn is such an honor, given her history and how distinguished she is in the Bournonville style.”
“This is really good for me as a dancer, to learn this style and way of presenting myself differently,” she said. “I am going to be able to apply this to the techniques we are used to doing.”
A contrasting premiere
Although the performing arts are built on teaching and coaching legacies, they also depend on the creative freedom to break away from tradition, and the room for new voices to create new works and new means of expression.
Balancing the traditional with the new, the MB will pair “La Sylphide” with the premiere of “Sans Pleurer” (“Without Crying”) by Milwaukee Ballet choreographer-in-residence Timothy O’Donnell.
Explaining that pairing a classical work with a modern is almost never done in the ballet world, O’Donnell said this pairing will present audiences with “an amazing contrast.”
The Australian native, who began dancing in mother’s ballet studio at age seven, described his piece as a contrast to “La Sylphide” in its style of dance, in its style of communication and in the personnel it requires.
“‘Sylphide’ is female dominated and ‘Sans Pleurer’ is male dominated,” O’Donnell said. “And my piece is not linear. But like all my pieces, it has very clear intent.”
That intent is to look at the struggles men face in a world that teaches them, from a young age, not to express themselves and not be emotionally vulnerable.
“How often are boys to told to be a ‘big boy’ and told not to cry?” he said.
O’Donnell said that throughout this experience of working with men in the MB company, “I’ve been just blown away by the guys’ sensitivity.”