Dance 396: Methods of teaching ballet: Bournonville

The Complete Ballet Libretti by August Bournonville During his lifetime the great Danish choreographer August Bournonville (1805 - 1879) created more than fifty ballets. As the rehearsal period for each ballet ended and the ballet reached its final form Bournonville published a short pamphlet giving the plot of the ballet in detail. All those which survice are gathered here, translated into English by Patricia N. McAndrew. The libretti help us to piece together a comprehensive picture of the Danish ballet master as an artist of national and international calibre and enable us to assess more fully his place in the world of nineteenth-century European ballet. As his characters and ideas unfold before us, we can begin to compare them with those of other choreographers of his day and finally discover, in part, something sorely missed by many critics today: the setting in which August Bournonville's choreographic "gems" were once displayed. Today, more than a century after his death, Bournonville's name is more widely known than it was during his lifetime: eight ballets and a number of assorted dances still grace the stage of Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, and those "skeletal" libretti-what Bournonville called his "ballet poems"-still exist to impress upon us what a treasure we possess in the Bournonville ballets, to remind us of what has been lost over the years, and-perhaps most important of all- -to reveal to us the workings of an ingenious, practical choreographer's mind.

Bournonville and Ballet Technique by Erik Bruhn; Lillian Moore We simply want to discuss a few things which are sometimes neglected even in the best schools and describe some of the ways they are taught in the Danish school where they are still remembered.'

The Bournonville tradition: The first fifty years, 1829-1879 by Jürgensen, Knud Arne v. 1. A documentary study v. 2. An annotated bibliography of the choreography and the music, the chronology, the performing history, and the sources

The Bournonville school by Kirsten Ralov Part of the legacy left by the great Danish dancer, choreographer, and teacher August Bournonville ( 1805 - 1879) was a series of six complete classes, one for every day of the dancer's working week. These classes, which form the basis of the Bournonville style, and which are still part of the training programme of the Royal Danish Ballet, are here published for the first time, edited and with a detailed commentary by the Bournonville expert Kirsten Ralov.

The Royal Danish Ballet by Svend Kragh-Jacobsen ''Den Kongelige Danske Ballet,'' Mr. Kragh-Jacobsen's history of the Royal Danish Ballet, published in Copenhagen in 1952, is still considered the most important scholarly work on that company.

Bournonville ballet technique by Vivi Flindt and Knud Arne Jürgense Two members of the Royal Danish Ballet perform various exercises based on the technique of the nineteenth-century choreographer August Bournonville, reconstructed from the notes of Hans Beck, and set to music of the time.