On Tuesday, 7th January 2025, I was pleased to welcome the great scholar Knud Arne Jürgensen for a podcast interview for the ”Conversations on Bournonville” series.
In this transcript of our conversation, we talk about Knud Arne’s life’s work in documenting August Bournonville’s life and art, his deep understanding of the Bournonville tradition and the challenges of maintaining and reviving Bournonville’s unique ballet art. We talk about what has been lost, and what can be brought back.
KNUD ARNE JÜRGENSEN
– CONVERSATIONS ON BOURNONVILLE #2
Recorded at Store Kirkestræde in Copenhagen on Tuesday, 7th January 2025.
Alexander Meinertz:
I’m honored to welcome Knud Arne Jürgensen as my guest for the second episode in the Conversations on Bournonville series. Knud Arne Jürgensen is a renowned Danish theater historian, author, and senior researcher holding the distinguished title of Dr. Phil. His 1997 doctoral thesis was on the subject of Giuseppe Verdi and the ballets in his operas.
But today the focus is, of course, on Bournonville. Knud Arne’s profound expertise on August Bournonville, Denmark’s famous dancer, choreographer, and ballet master, is reflected in his three English-language monographs, including The Bournonville Tradition, The First Fifty Years 1829-1879. This seminal work is presented in two parts, a documentary study and an annotated bibliography of the choreography and the music, the chronology, the performing history, and the sources.
From 1998 to 2010, Jürgensen served as the head of the drama collection at the Royal Danish Library, where he worked as a research librarian, senior researcher, and subject specialist in theater and performing arts. Following that, from 2011 to 2017, he contributed his vast knowledge as an exhibition curator, senior researcher, and subject specialist at the Copenhagen Theatre Museum at the Court Theatre. Welcome, Knud Arne.
Is there anything you would like to add to this impressive list of accomplishments?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, perhaps to start with the beginning. Before I went into musicology, dance, and theater history, I actually studied piano, and in many ways that was the beginning of my interest into ballet as well. I went for a private teacher in my late teenage years, and then I was admitted to the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music.
And from there, I changed to music history and musicology. But that was actually the beginning.
Alexander Meinertz:
A very useful foundation for the study of ballet! But with the focus on Bournonville, I think it’s fair to say that your work, your insight and scholarship have illuminated his legacy and the rich history of the Danish ballet more than any other person’s.
It’s been a lifelong focus and a lifelong passion. Can you share how you first became interested in theater and ballet? Was there a specific moment or a performance that inspired this interest?

Knud Arne Jürgensen:
It was a process, I would say. As I just mentioned, I studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music, and when you are a music student, you have no money. That seems to be the law.
So I was offered the possibility of playing to ballet classes. It was Kirsten Simone who gave private lessons at a studio here in Copenhagen, and I knew her beforehand. And she was in need of a pianist because the regular pianist was ill for a period of time.
She asked me if I could step in and play for her classes, and so I did. And by doing that – it was a brief period, but anyhow – doing that, I very easily turned my interest into dance in the way that it was a new experience for me to play music, to play music of my own choice, to be using this music for actual movement purposes.
Little by little, I realised that here was material that was predestined for myself, for my interest. And that’s how I started really delving into the material of Bournonville and getting to know him from the inside, so to speak.
And it gave me an interest in the art form of dance, what is it, really? So when the regular pianist returned, I ended up by taking dancing lessons with Simone and stood at the bar and learned the terminology, learned the basic steps, positions, etc., etc. And that was, I think, the starting point for my interest in ballet.
And if you ask for a specific moment, at least in the theatre experience, I would mention Fanfare by Jerome Robbins. Yes, that really sparked my interest because I found it very witty, very musical, and very interesting as a style of dance. So that’s where I really got hooked on seeing ballet, going to ballet, and studying ballet.

Alexander Meinertz:
How did Bournonville become the focus of your work?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, that came also as a sort of process because in my student years in musicology, I had a student job at the Royal Library where, many years later, I ended up in my professional life. But in the student years, a lot of material was put in my hands, to sort out what it was and how to catalogue it and describe it. Because apparently I had said to my superior that I was very interested in dance music and ballet music, so she thought I should take care of this great trunk of the archival material from the Royal Theatre.
And in that, I discovered there were a lot of, of course, Bournonville scores, but even more interesting, there were a lot of notations by Bournonville himself, autographed notations by Bournonville describing the mime, the choreography, and the action of these many, many, many unknown ballets. Of course, we knew the 10, 12 ballets in the repertory very well, but there were so many scores, so much interesting material, music-wise and choreographically speaking. So I thought this should really be a field of study, and perhaps I should write my thesis on this material.
And then I started not only sorting it out, but actually analysing it. And little by little, I realised that here was material that was predestined for myself, for my interest. And that’s how I started really delving into the material of Bournonville and getting to know him from the inside, so to speak.
Alexander Meinertz:
When was this?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
This was in the late 70s, mid-70s, late 70s, and in the early 80s as well. I think I was a student, working as a student at the Royal Library for a period of time of six years, and then my career changed. I went abroad and came back and returned to the Royal Library as head of the drama collection at that time and was put in charge of all the performing arts.
So Bournonville followed me all the way.
Alexander Meinertz:
Can you tell us, from your studies, what are your observations? What is Bournonville’s philosophy of ballet, and how is it distinguished from that of his contemporaries?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, when you have spent so many years with him, of course you can see it in a helicopter view, so to speak, in a perspective with the greater European ballet history. In my view, he is one of the only four great ballet masters of the 19th century. There’s Bournonville here in Denmark, there’s Petipa in Russia, there’s Carlo Blasis in Milan, and then there are several actually in the Paris Opéra, choreographers who were representative of the French school.
But these four schools, in my opinion, are really the backbone of the entire European ballet history in Bournonville’s century. The Italian school, the French school, which in a way fused together to become the Russian school, and then the Bournonville school. And Bournonville stands really out, because although we tend to regard him as an exclusive Danish phenomenon, it is something I really have to oppose, because he was so influenced by his contemporaries.
He knew them, he visited them, and he worked with them during his extensive European tours. And he was very influenced by their art as well, and even he took some of their great pieces of dance and worked them into his own works here in Copenhagen. So Bournonville was not an isolated phenomenon, as we sometimes tend to regard him.
No, he was a true European, or at least he had a true European orientation in his artistic view. And that is extremely important, because it’s not a local phenomenon or a representation of Biedermeier culture. No, he was very well orientated, very well acquainted with the different aesthetic ideals.
What I would say is really unique in Bournonville, and something that is really of his own invention, his own characteristic, is poetry
But of course, his possibility and the conditions to develop and to make his art form live were completely different in Denmark, where the ballet was far more reduced in size and economic means and number of performances than the great metropoles in Russia, in Italy, in France. And what I would say is really unique in Bournonville, and something that is really of his own invention, his own characteristic, is poetry. We know that Hans Christian Andersen called Bournonville a ballet poet, and it is the poetry in his way of attacking dance that is uniquely him.
And that is both a musical and a choreographic phenomenon, because in Bournonville, the mime is singing and the dance is talking, if one could put it in a little particular way. His mime is really arias in gestures, whereas his dance, his actual steps, his actual choreography, are steps talking. He wants to say something in steps.
And that understanding is far more intense and far deeper than what we see in French, Italian, and Russian schools, which tend to be more bravoura, more outwards, more, in Danish we have a wonderful word for it, “pragt” – splendor. Bournonville is not a man who seeks the splendor. He seeks the inner expression, the inner life, and tries to express that in his characters and as well in his way of telling a story in his ballets.
So that I would consider the most genuine thing in Bournonville and his heritage.

Alexander Meinertz:
You said that you think that the Danish angle is overrated or there has been put too much focus on the Danish part of Bournonville’s identity, but I would like to ask you anyway how his work influenced or is connected to the Danish cultural identity, because he was an artist working at a formative time in Denmark, in Danish history, and in the formation of the Danish modern character and modern sort of identity.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
I think Bournonville lived in a period, which is very interesting. Speaking about the poetry and the spirit in his work, he lived in a period where we were really sitting between two chairs, the one belonging to the romanticism, the romantic movement, and the other to the rational movement. I could exemplify this with the great Danish natural scientist Hans Christian Ørsted, who wrote the famous collection of essays called The Soul in Nature, Ånden i Naturen. And this is perhaps the closest you can come to Bournonville as well.
And in that sense, he was really part of the spiritual movement of his time. The natural laws were the guiding spirit for Ørsted, and that perhaps is also valid for Bournonville in his artistic philosophy. The natural laws, but not in the sense of you have to express only those, but you have to find the spirit in the natural laws, in the physical natural laws of his choreography.
And in that sense, I think he was really, he had the same breath as the time of the great personalities. Thorvaldsen, a little before Bournonville, had the same approach to art. It was not the perfect figures, the perfect models. It was to try to bring out the spirit of the marble, and Bournonville tries to bring out the spirit in the bodies, the human bodies. In that sense, he’s a great sculptor, and he’s a great philosopher of dance.
Alexander Meinertz:
Thorvaldsen was a great inspiration for him, and he considered him one of his artistic godfathers, I think. And I also know, but I’m not sure about the specifics – we talked about it once – that at some point he had copies made of some of Thorvaldsen’s work and put them in the dance studios at the Royal Theatre for the dancers to draw inspiration from these works and bring it into their art. Is that correct?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
I think I have read that it was at the studio, which was located outside the Royal Theatre, in what we call Ny Vestergade, near to the National Museum. They were there in that studio, but this was in Bournonville’s later years.
It might have been a reaction to the new ideals that were coming even closer, almost day by day. He had been out of Denmark for a couple of years, working in Sweden, and when he came back, he saw the influence of a French pupil of his who had taken over his position in the meantime, Gustave Carey. And this French influence was somewhat disturbing to Bournonville, because he thought he could keep control of the development of ballet and his own dancers according to his personal ideal; he regarded them as his own children really. So, I think the reason why he put these replicas of Thorvaldsen’s sculptures, his most famous sculptures, into the ballet studio was to give a reminder to his students, to his pupils, that “here is my ideal physically speaking to you”, as well as in the teaching he gave them.
There is much more music, so to speak, in Bournonville than the one we hear and see today
But it was in the later years that he really got focused. In many ways, Bournonville returned to his youth in his older days and his aesthetic ideals that had been formed and cultivated during his years of study in Paris, he also came back to them in his very late years. There’s no doubt about that.
Perhaps he was not really keen of moving into a new direction, but still we know that he considered his entire career in four stages, and we know the years of each period because he writes it in both in his diary and elsewhere in letters, that every time he had made a major trip abroad, Russia, twice in Italy, Vienna and Paris, a lot of times London, he always came back and changed his own style of dancing. He made it very clear that dance for him was not a fixed, a very fixed or static expression, that as a form of expression it should develop with time. And so, in that sense, he was very keen to be influenced and to develop his own art form.
And we can follow that when we look at his notations, when you see his actual recording of his own works, how his vocabulary changed, how his vocabulary of steps is still developing into a new form, a new richness. And we should not forget that what we know as Bournonville today is really only one-fifth, perhaps only one-sixth of what he actually created. But if you study his notes and if you study his less-known, totally forgotten ballets, you can see there is a rich vocabulary that we can’t really see anymore in the surviving ballets.
And this tells me that there is much more music, so to speak, in Bournonville than the one we hear and see today.

Alexander Meinertz:
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of Psyche, which is also called his “Thorvaldsen ballet”. That is one of the lost works, but it was a work that was, I think, very different from anything he’d done before, and he never attempted to do anything in the same style again. This is also a work that you have studied?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Indeed, I tried to analyze and made an analytic reconstruction of one of the solos from that ballet. And, well, it was actually a ballet he made for the royal family as evening entertainment at the royal palace, to be performed under private forms. It was more a tableau vivant. But then he was so keen and got so excited about the idea of making sculptures come alive, that he wanted to develop the tableau vivant genre into an actual drama, a dance drama.
And so he did, and he really had a great try in making sculptural dance, which had been famous before him also. There was a very famous Danish dancer, ballerina, or she wasn’t a professional dancer, but she made Thorvaldsen sculptures, Ida Brun. She performed in the higher society circles, where she made the most prominent sculptures by Thorvaldsen come alive.
One of the most unique aspects of Bournonville, that he makes pantomime sing. And he makes steps talk
And Bournonville had known or heard about this and thought, “so ein Ding muss ich auch haben”. And so he did. But it was not, of course, the most prolific output of his artistic legacy. But he was flirting, so to say, with this aspect of making sculptures dance. And in particular, in his mime, it followed him all his life. He never gave up on the idea that mime should really come from the inside, it was an inner life in a sculptural body. That is his real philosophy of pantomime. And that he managed to express in most of his ballets.
We can still see traces of it when they are well-performed, so to speak, in the ballets that have been preserved. But you can see it as well in the many, many historic photographs that I have unearthed and published. Some of them were actually entire scenes photographed all the way through.
And you can, by putting them together like a cartoon, nearly see how they danced and sang these pantomimic scenes through their bodies. So, your question was related to this, I think. I deviated perhaps a little bit.
But it is one of the most unique aspects of Bournonville, that he makes pantomime sing. And he makes steps talk.
Alexander Meinertz:
This brings me to take a leap forward. You’ve studied the historical records. You know the repertory that’s still performed. And you’ve followed the guardianship of the Royal Danish Ballet of the Bournonville Heritage since the 1970s. I’d like to ask you about the Royal Danish Ballet’s role in preserving the heritage.
How has the company managed its responsibility as a steward over these years? And what are the most significant changes that you’ve seen?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, I became aware of the changes already when I was studying the old photographs and saw some postures and some way of carrying your body that had changed. Even when you have to be in a photographic study and you have to pose in front of the photographer, you could see immediately that they had a different sort of relaxed softness in their body, even when they had to pose. But still, it was posing in a very natural way.
And it’s the naturalness in Bournonville’s way of attacking movement that perhaps has been lost. Dancers in the most recent generations, and before them as well, have focused so much about the complete execution of every single step that everything is on the same scale, on the same dynamic scale. You cannot really feel where we have piano, pianissimo, or we have fortissimo, or the accents of the syncopes anymore.
And that, I think, is a great impoverishment of how to perform Bournonville. And when I have pointed this out to dancers with whom I’ve been in contact, they always say to me as a sort of warning sign, yes, but that will be a museum-like approach. And to that, I have to say that if you approach Bournonville’s ballets as a genre painting of the 19th century – and that is what they actually are, they are paintings, moving paintings – if you approach such a painting, and now I’m talking about the actual painting, then you don’t start by actually painting it over or adding other colors or adding other character.
You actually have to do better than that… It would be a better approach if you actually approach them or get closer to them with a wish of getting into their secrets and getting into their inner messages instead of giving them this broader line of execution.
And that is perhaps one of the greatest changes that has appeared with the Bournonville repertory, negative changes, I would say, during the last two, three, four decades.
Alexander Meinertz:
When I spoke to Amy Watson a couple of weeks ago for a similar podcast, she said that it’s important to focus on the essence of Bournonville and the essence of each work. And I remember thinking, what about the specifics? Maybe the specifics are as important to keep in mind.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
It’s difficult to talk about the essence, because having been occupied with Bournonville for so many years as I have been, of course you make several observations about what is the essence of Bournonville, and you cannot really pinpoint one element or two elements or five elements in the Bournonvillean philosophy or style. But if I have to say something to me, the essence is marked by the word poetry. That is really the essence of the whole thing.
And if that poetry in movements, in way of narrative and so on, is not there, but is only delivered in the sense of “performing” the thing, then that wouldn’t be Bournonville. It should, in a way, be recited. And if that is not there, then it’s really not worth looking at.
So that is, to me, the essence. And I welcome what Amy Watson says, if that is what she means by the term essence, because the essence in the sense of individual technical aspects is not really the greatest importance to me. It is the spirit of poetry that has to be within every single scene, and it is there if you really move into the ballets and try to dig out every scene which over these 150 years have been been simplified, little by little, in the way of executing them in front of the audience.
If you really look into them, you can still see traces, and in particular, if you read his notations and you read them in connection with the music, this element of poetry pops up by themselves. So that is, to me, the essence to focus on for the future in order to get to the core of Bournonville’s art.
Alexander Meinertz:
I agree with you completely. And when I was talking to Amy Watson, I remember thinking that she was also talking about who would be staging. She was talking about bridging the generational gap and bringing in new people to stage the repertory.
And I remember thinking, but I didn’t say it at the time, that the most important thing is to find a stager who is a poet. You don’t need somebody who is a dramatic choreographer. That’s important too, but the most important thing is to find somebody who is a poet.
If you look back at the people who have been staging the Bournonville repertory in your time, who have had this poetry, who have been able to bring out this poetry in his ballets?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
It’s always easy to talk about the essence and the need for a poetic approach, and you can easily talk about that on paper or in words, but actually doing it in practical theater work is far harder. I think it comes back to the music. If you have the musical sense that is so innate in Bournonville’s approach to dance, because it’s all music, then it’s really all music.
I think that great choreographers of modern times, Balanchine among them, was fascinated by Bournonville because he had this unique sense of performing music, performing music within the steps, within the mime, within the gestures, within the movement, and the way he covered the stage in a musical way, not just running up and running down, but including the dance floor into a musical scheme. That is, to me, the most important prerequisite, I think it is the only way to deal with Bournonville in an honest and understanding form.
Alexander Meinertz:
So do we have somebody in the company today who has this quality?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
It is not really my place to make suggestions, but I think I can pinpoint them just watching the company. You can see there are two, or one, who really has the feeling, and that is why I come back to see Bournonville, for those rare moments, even these days when we have a lot of foreign dancers as integral parts of the company. Some of them have the style and the understanding, not all, but some of them have this, and today they have to master so many aspects of dance that in itself is so hard.
But that’s where I mean that if you have it, you have it because it’s innate in your body, it’s innate in your sense for music, and then it’s not really a problem. So those are probably the persons and the individuals that should have the task of bringing Bournonville into the future.
Alexander Meinertz:
Are there any positive improvements? I’ve always thought that… We’re talking about the things that have been lost, but what about the things that the tradition and the ballets have gained? I’ve always thought that the tradition also enriched the works in many ways, at least up until 2005.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, I’m afraid I cannot really praise what has been gained, at least not in the last decade. I think it has been terribly impoverished for many reasons, and I know it’s easy to make this criticism when you’re not in charge of defending Bournonville on stage yourself.
But I think we have lost many, many elements in Bournonville, even in our days. I can make several examples of this. A Folk Tale, which is supposed to be perhaps his primary work and is regarded as his most Danish work as such, is a sad example of this.
I had the chance to talk to Ulla Poulsen Skou, who was a ballerina during Harald Lander’s period, and before him as well, in the beginning, in the first decades of the 20th century, in the 1920s and 30s. I took initiative to make an interview with her, together with Vivi Flindt, and we filmed it. And Ulla Poulsen Skou taught us, or rather, she showed us, she actually demonstrated one of the scenes from A Folk Tale with Hilda, the young maiden of the ballet, who, by intuition, realizes that she is not really a troll.
She’s not belonging to that world. And how does she do that? Because she finds two pieces of wood in front of the chimney or in front of the fireplace, and forms them into a cross.
And that whole scene, and the way it was demonstrated by Ulla Poulsen Skou, was extremely revealing to me. We have it on record, it is on video now. And she had learned it from Betty Hennings, who had performed Hilda, and who had learned the role from Bournonville herself, so you cannot get closer than that.

And there you really see what was lost, what is lost in those recent years of mime scenes, of an enormous importance for their poetic qualities, for their musical qualities. Even if we didn’t have music when she showed us the scene, you could almost hear it. And I tend to say that it was one of my greatest experiences ever seeing Bournonville performed, even if she was just sitting in her armchair and doing the whole thing in front of us.
But it was very, very revealing. So there are things we are losing, and this entire scene was taken out in the last production. Nobody can tell me why.
But it is so many other things, many other elements, particularly referring to A Folk Tale. The cup, the golden cup that Hilda gives to Junker Ove in the first act in front of the hill, the troll hill, and which is filled with poison, is actually her baptismal cup which the trolls stole when they changed the two girls and took her away from her home.
And that, again, is one of those symbols that you have to stress, you have to put forward: the Christianity that permeates so much in this ballet, but you cannot get a hint of it today.
And also, the role of Birthe, Frøken Birthe, it is perhaps one of the deepest roles in the entire Bournonville repertory, psychologically speaking, because here we are seeing a lady, a young girl, who is grown up in a milieu that she doesn’t belong to. And that happens today in modern life as well. We have children who grow up in families where they really don’t fit in.
“We could concentrate it a bit, we could make the performance a little shorter, we could have a three bill in the evening instead of only two”. But in this way you are impoverishing the repertory and the heritage in my view.
And the way he describes her change, both in the notes – we have his choreographic notations and in some of the old recordings we have from that ballet – it’s so interesting because it’s really an escalation of psychology. We often say that Bournonville doesn’t have a psychological approach to describing his characters, to depicting them. But surely he did, and he had a great psychological insight in how to portray them. Today, Birthe has just become some sort of burlesque, comic, and rough lady, but that was not really the intention with this character. Of course you can have that opinion, but to me you are losing a lot of the inner qualities and the psychological depth of these characters.
And that is also the case with many of the other ballets. There are several inner layers in most of his characters, which we tend to see generally as just very sweet characters of genre pictures. No, it’s not true.
If you really look for it, then the psychology is there. Basically, La Sylphide, which is perhaps his internationally most well-known work, tells the same story and really describes the spiritual conflict in James. This lady, La Sylphide, is indeed a lady, not a young girl that James might fall in love with, because we have a mime scene with the Sylphide, where she tells him that, in the original version. Not in the latest version, but before them. She tells him that she has followed him from when he was just a little boy and into he’s a full-grown man.
So that means this lady, La Sylphide, is not someone that James is falling in love with. No, it has a far deeper aspect. He is attracted to the freedom, to the womanhood in general. It is not a sexual attraction for this creature, this spirit of the air.
And why this mime scene, where she really says that she is far older than him – they say Sylphides can be 300 years old… I don’t think La Sylphide should be presented as a 300 years old creature. But she is a lady and a female out of this world, and James sees her not as an attractive woman that he has to follow, but far more as a symbol of what he is longing for. And that becomes so clear when you follow these elements in the mime.
Don’t cut them out or omit them. The stories are too amputated in many ways today. And that’s perhaps a natural development, because we have to do it differently than the previous generation? “We could concentrate it a bit, we could make the performance a little shorter, we could have a three bill in the evening instead of only two”. But in this way you are impoverishing the repertory and the heritage in my view.
Alexander Meinertz:
So do you think there is… We talked about the works being in a way also museum pieces, but if you have to sort of adapt them and balance them, is it possible to find a balance between preserving the original works and all these elements, or even bringing back these elements that have been lost and making them accessible to modern audiences?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Yes. Again, it’s far easier to talk and write about this than make it happen on the stage. But still, you have to look for… In Danish, the word is “spændingsflader”, the moments of conflicts in the narrative of each ballet. And you have to find these spaces. It’s like in a music piece, in a music score, there are always some moments where the whole symphony changes, where it develops into something else that really distances it from what has been there.
And that is to me the great challenge. You have to find these places in the ballets where you really reveal what is going on. And then you have to support them and make them more prolific.
But always within the realm of poetry, preserving the poetry, making it a natural change in the rhythm of the ballets, rather than focusing on a dance technical perfection. And that is, in my opinion, what has been lost in the way they actually dance, not only perform, but actually danced. Which you could perhaps go back to.
How can you adapt them for today’s audience? Again, by going back to Bournonville
Let me again refer to A Folk Tale, in the second act, in the Troll Hill, in the underworld, where Hilda has a solo. This solo is actually danced to a bolero. And that’s interesting, a bolero in this so-called Danish environment or fairytale environment? But when you really play the music as a bolero, and I’ve talked with conductors who have done it, then you can see a completely different quality in this dance.
It’s a sort of staccato that has been lost. Little by little, these things have vanished in the many years of tradition. And if you go back to them, then you can sharpen the interpretation, and you suddenly get the dance talking again, because Hilde is actually dancing a bolero in front of these trolls that surround her.
But also, again, A Folk Tale. Well, how can you adapt them for today’s audience? Again, by going back to Bournonville.
Bournonville states, and that we can prove, it’s in writing, that the trolls, the so-called trolls, what we call trolls, what we now see as trolls, in his original A Folk Tale, he didn’t see them as trolls. They were, in his opinion, people that came from the very far north during the small ice ages in the 16th, 17th, and 1800s, and moved to Denmark, and settled in the very isolated areas of Jutland, and lived under some…
Alexander Meinertz:
In earth caves.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Yes, in earth caves, yes. And lived very isolated. People were frighthened of them, because they were really very strange people.
They came from Lapland, and Bournonville specifies this in one of the French versions of his librettos, he explains it very specifically. And if you study the original interpreters of the roles, the photographs we have of them, you can see that he saw these trolls, so-called trolls, in a far more realistic way than we see today, where it seems that every production has to surpass the previous one into the most burlesque and the most satirical and the more grotesque staging you can imagine. But they were actually human beings living under the earth, living apart from society, and that is not something I’m making up, but that is really what Bournonville states clearly. The last of the “small” ice ages actually ended in 1850, according to meteorological studies. And these travellers were the inspiration for Bournonville.
And to be frank, people didn’t believe in trolls in those days. They were not that naive, but they believed in the poor creatures that he put on stage in that particular ballet, and that’s why it was a success from the very beginning. It was a shocking experience for the time, and I think it could be as shocking today, not as a burlesque, or comical as we tend to see it today in today’s performances.
So in that sense, you can update by going back. To the sources, yes.
Alexander Meinertz:
I think there is a production that I haven’t seen myself of A Folk Tale, neither on video or in life, that maybe was a little bit closer to this idea? It’s the one that Kirsten Ralov did for Tivoli, I think, and it was with sets and costumes by maybe, was it Lars Juhl? I seem to remember reading or seeing photos where the trolls were more human-like than we’ve seen in other productions.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
I talked to Kirsten Ralov around that time, and I had a very good relation with her. She respected my views and my knowledge. It’s a big word, but she didn’t have the time to go and study in the original sources because of her many duties, and she respected that somebody did.
I came in contact with her by chance but it developed very naturally, and I ended up interviewing her for my project with Vivi Flindt. And remember, how, after everybody had left, we were still talking about how to do Bournonville, how to work with Bournonville.
And Kirsten Ralov had this wonderful expression… She was very keen about seeing and finding the inner essence of Bournonville, and she had this wonderful expression. I will say it in Danish: “Der gror skvalderkål i hele Bournonvilles blomsterbed”. I don’t know how you would translate that, but it means that…
Alexander Meinertz:
Weeds are growing in the…
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Exactly, weeds are growing all over the flowers in Bournonville’s rose garden. Yes, something like that.
Perhaps it’s something that happens when Bournonville is not regarded as a true challenge, but just as something that has to be kept alive. And that is, to me, perhaps the greatest problem. How do you keep them alive, these ballets?
First of all, not by dance, not by mime, but by a dramaturgical insight into what the tectonic plates are that make the whole story change and move forward. And if you can’t find them, if you can’t really find these elements, these basic elements of which the ballets are constructed, then you end up with just a genre picture. And that is perhaps what we are seeing most of the time today.
Alexander Meinertz:
The previous director, Nikolaj Hübbe, also clearly wasn’t very interested in Bournonville. He dutifully staged three versions of three ballets himself and more or less let the rest of the repertory rest, and he seemed to be less interested in Danish dancers and all those things.
We have a new director now, Amy Watson, who took over the directorship on the 1st of November. She says that she’s bringing the Bournonville repertory as a priority.
What is your expectation?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
What are my hopes, I would say. Expectations is a very loaded word, but what I would like to see is a way to move forward with Bournonville through working with those forgotten ballets – and there are a handful of them who really deserve, in terms of music and choreography, to be taken seriously again and put into repertory. I would love to see some serious work on that front, because they are not weighed down by tradition, and tradition is such a broad concept.
Tradition is really manifold, and in a way also a very heavy burden to deal with and to confront yourself with.
But these ballets, you cannot really see them under the prism of tradition. You would have to approach them as if you are creating them anew, and some attempts have been done in this direction, but I think there are still sources – and that I can talk about because I know them, these sources, by heart – that could become performances worth watching and works which would enrich our knowledge of him as an artist, as an art creator.
It’s a great challenge to work with them, to work with notations and old scores. It is indeed. But I think that if that is what you mean, one of my hopes would be fulfilled.
Alexander Meinertz:
Which ballets would you like to see reconstructed?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Oh, we have talked a lot about A Folk Tale. I’d like to reconstruct that, as you can guess from what I’ve said, in the sense of going back to what it really was, in the dramaturgical sense. There are also two of the Norwegian ballets, which is worth looking at.
One is Fjeldstuen, The Mountain Hut, a very realistic ballet. We talked about the realism, the psychological realism, in Bournonville in the role of Frøken Birthe in A Folk Tale. The Mountain Hut, which has splendid music as well, could make a very interesting ballet.
I don’t think you necessarily have to do them exactly as they were written down in the original scores. You have to do some editing here and there, no doubt.
Tradition is really manifold, and in a way also a very heavy burden to deal with and to confront yourself with
And the other one is one which Flemming Flindt did many years ago in Oslo, Brudefærden i Hardanger, The Bridal Procession in Hardanger. That would be very interesting to work with. Perhaps not so much because of the dancing parts, though some of it is lovely dancing, it’s nearly all folk dance. The divertissements are very Norwegian in style and inspired from Norwegian folk dances. But it is for the mime we should look at it again.
To work on this ballet for the mime and to find your way back to that mimic, musical, plastic way of mime, sculptural way of mime that makes pantomime sing. That ballet would be a lovely thing to work on from that perspective.
I can mention also the Flower Festival in Genzano as a possibility.
It’s a more divertissement-like project, but still, it’s one of the most complete notations. It’s completely notated all over. So it would also be a challenge or a great, now you mentioned the word, expectation to see how it can be possible to really recreate Bournonville choreography when we only have it – apart from the pas de deux – in notation, preserved from notation. On paper only.
So these four or five projects I think should be valid and should be a priority. I have heard that Valkyrien is also a possible project. Harald Lander tried in the 1930s, but it didn’t work that time, in spite of the music, because these bulging ballets of Bournonville’s in the Nordic mythological spheres are difficult to deal with for a modern audience.
Too difficult, I would say.
Alexander Meinertz:
The Lay of Thrym, which was the most recent reconstruction, didn’t succeed.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Well, there were elements of interest in that, in my point of view, because I knew it so well from the notations, from the notation perspective. But as a theatrical performance, it really fell through, I must say, with regret. The music too for that ballet is wonderful, Hartmann’s music.
Alexander Meinertz:
And recently one of the young dancers in the company, Eliabe D’Abadia, used part of the music for choreography. He did a ballet called The Pearl.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
Oh yes, yes, from Hartmann’s score. Yes, yes, and it’s true, it’s wonderful music. The Greek dances in Valkyrien, the whole Greek dance divertissement is perhaps some of the best ballet music Hartmann ever wrote, even surpassing his music for A Folk Tale and other works.
So in that sense, I think it was an interesting… and an intelligent approach of making this music alive again.
Alexander Meinertz:
I would like to, here at the end, to ask you about memorable moments, if you have a favorite Bournonville ballet or a specific moment in your career connected to his works that stands out?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
I have to think, because… one single one, it’s like you ask who is your favorite composer and then you have to start to choose among them. Funny enough, I think one of the best entertaining, I would say, perhaps not moving, but entertaining moments, was Kermesse in Bruges, which is really a fairytale ballet in the best sense of the word.
And Kirsten Simone, who recently died, performed fru van Everdingen in this, with a spirit that really was the Bournonville comédienne that I hadn’t seen before in any previous work by Bournonville… It was more sort of standard technical, standard mime, but she really played her mime scenes in this genuinely and with spirit.
Alexander Meinertz:
She went all in, didn’t she?
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
She went all in, but she never overplayed it, she looked for the small finesses and she always had her eyes on everybody else on the stage during her appearance. And that is one of the secrets of Bournonville, that it’s one big teamwork. And some of the younger dancers coming from abroad don’t really feel it naturally.
They feel they have to do it correctly and they have to do it well, both in terms of mime and choreography, dancing. But they lack this sense of a mutual performance, which we are all in. And that Kirsten really carried through in her performance of that character role.
Alexander Meinertz:
Fortunately, that performance has been recorded, that’s on video.

Knud Arne Jürgensen:
That has been preserved for posterity, yes. I came to think, of course, I have to mention it, Anna Lærkesen, the other great Danish ballerina of my youth, in La Sylphide. Of course, it was her role, perhaps her best role ever.
She had something which made me go and see every single performance. And that something was that she had one singular moment in every performance where you really couldn’t see what would happen beforehand. I think it was a kind of a speciality of hers, that you could never really foresee everything in her performance.
You could guess that there would be something tonight. And that is a rare quality, because when Bournonville becomes predictable, and nowadays it’s all too predictable when you see a Bournonville ballet, I’m afraid, for me at least. But when it’s not predictable, then what will be next?
Anna Lærkesen, the other great Danish ballerina of my youth, in La Sylphide. Of course, it was her role, perhaps her best role ever
Then you are in his world, truly. And Anna Lærkesen had that in the particular role of La Sylphide. I remember I talked to Nureyev, who was once a guest here for a few performances and danced with her, and he said, “I was taken away in the role James. She took the role away from me because I was so absorbed by her approaching me all the time”. And that sort of connection on stage, between two artists of that caliber tells me of the great, great potential of Bournonville. Bournonville’s choreography, Bournonville’s mime, and Bournonville’s art of dance.
It was very interesting to see these two artists in particular, but always it was even more interesting to see the hidden and the secret moments where Anna Lærkesen said: “Here I am”. And then she showed something that you had never seen before. There was always a moment like that.
Alexander Meinertz:
Thank you, Knud Arne. This was, of course, incredibly enlightening and I’m going to refer to the list of your publications on your website when we publish the transcript of this interview. Because we’ve only touched on the surface of everything you know about Bournonville and everything you have to say about him.
Thank you again.
Knud Arne Jürgensen:
My pleasure.
