| ROYAL DANISH BALLET SCHOOL |
The Royal Danish Ballet School has trained dancers for the Royal Danish Ballet since the 1770s, and like the company itself, the school is one of the oldest of its kind in Europe. The Royal Danish Ballet School is still situated at the theater, making Denmark the sole country in the world in which the national ballet company, the ballet school, and the attached primary school are all located under the same roof. With this unique position, the Royal Danish Ballet School is able to offer its pupils a range of special opportunities and experiences.
In 1771, The French dancer and royal court dancing-master, Pierre Laurent, founded the first formalized ballet school at the Royal Danish Theatre. The school was run on a rather humble scale with Laurent teaching six to eight pupils for two hours every day in the unheated vestibule of the Court Theatre at Christiansborg Palace. But Laurent’s school soon lost its dance lesson “monopoly” at the Royal Danish Theatre.
The Italian dancer, choreographer and teacher, Vincenzo Galeotti, was engaged as ballet master in 1775. Galeotti, later, felt the need to establish a school of his own, and for some time the two schools existed side by side. In the 19th century during the Golden Age of the theater, conditions were finally ripe for the establishment of a ballet school which began to resemble the one we know today. Under the supervision of ballet master August Bournonville, the Royal Danish Ballet School was reorganized in 1847, dividing the pupils into two classes; one reserved exclusively for the children, and the other one for the adult dancers. As a further improvement, the ballet company finally moved in 1853 from the small facilities at the Court Theatre and got its own dancing hall at the theatre at Kongens Nytorv.
In the early 1930s Harald Lander became ballet master and took on the task of bringing the Royal Danish Ballet up-todate, including a reorganisation of the Royal Danish Ballet School. The training program known as the “Bournonville School” was no longer autocratic; it remained a part of the education, but new training systems were also admitted. For instance, the teacher Karl Merrild began using exercises for the children lying on the floor in order to improve leg lifts—a method that was regarded as sheer madness at the time, but which is today recognised as an effective element of the training. Also in Lander’s period the school began to acknowledge the need for a proper training for the apprentices, the young dancers aged 16–18.
The maintenance of the Bournonville style is of central importance to the Royal Danish Ballet and consequently must be part of the training offered at the Royal Danish Ballet School. Recently, the Bournonville training has been extended to two classes a week, on the initiative of artistic director Frank Andersen and Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter, Head of the Royal Danish Ballet School. But a range of movement and dance forms other than classical ballet have also been integrated into the programs of children and adults alike, in order to provide a more varied and up-to-date training. Thus, the children are also trained in contemporary dance, character dance, Martha Graham style, drama, music, mime, gymnastics, and Pilates.
Since 1988, the Royal Danish Ballet School has staged a children’s ballet every year. Many of these ballets have been choreographed especially for the ballet children. In this field, the Danish choreographer Lise la Cour has been a pioneer, creating a series of popular children’s ballets based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tales. More recently, the English-born choreographer Tim Rushton and the Swedish choreographer Pär Isberg have also contributed several ballets for children. The annual children’s ballet is a great event at the Old Stage, a quality performance with live music by the Royal Danish Orchestra and around 10,000 tickets sold every year.
The Royal Danish Ballet School is an institution that constantly develops in response to the ever-changing demands on its students. It is also, however, a school with deep roots in a long national tradition—and thus the Bournonville style and classes still remain the core in the training of Danish ballet children.
Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter, Director of the Ballet School and Instructor, trained at the Ballet School at the Royal Danish Theatre. She became an apprentice in 1965, and in 1967, she was engaged as a dancer by the Royal Danish Ballet, where she has danced a number of soloist roles including Eleonora and Marchen in The Kermesse in Bruges and Svanilda in Coppelia, as well as roles in Napoli; The Flower Festival in Genzano; The Conservatory; La Sylphide; and Far from Denmark. Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter started to teach in 1979, and in 1988, she was appointed Director of the Ballet School at the Royal Danish Theatre. Further, Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter has staged a number of Bournonville-ballets at the Royal Theatre. In 1991, she staged a new version of A Folk Tale together with Frank Andersen, and in 1998, she recreated the ballet Bellman for the Royal Swedish Ballet’s 200-year anniversary. Also, she has instructed a number of ballets for the students at the Ballet School.
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