Erik Bruhn

Submitted by MiJohnson on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM

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Erik Bruhn

Erik Bruhn
Erik Bruhn was born on October 3, 1928 in Copenhagen, and died April 1, 1986 in Toronto. He is considered one of the finest dancers ever produced by the Royal Danish Ballet School and is generally known as one of the primary ballet artists of the twentieth century. Bruhn was a Danish dancer, choreographer, and company director.
Bruhn began his dance training when he was six years old at a local ballet school in the village of Gentofte. Bruhn began his dance training when he was six years old at a local ballet school in the village of Gentofte. He entered the ballet school of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen in 1937, when he was nine, and pursued his studies there—in academic subjects as well as dancing—for the next ten years. The ballet teacher of greatest importance to him as a youth was Harald Lander. In 1942, at age fourteen, Bruhn appeared as a principal dancer in a student production of August Bournonville's Napoli and displayed in public for the first time the purity of his line, the lightness of his jump, the cleanness of his footwork, and his exceptional facility for the Bournonville technique. He would later pursue his studies with Vera Volkova, who came to Copenhagen in 1951, and with Stanislas Idzikowski in London.
In the first part of his career, Bruhn was the epitome of the classical dancer—Le danseur noble et sérieux—and one of the most elegant performers in the world. With his pale Nordic beauty, immaculate technique, innate musicality, and strong dramatic sense, he was perfectly suited to dance all the princes in the classical repertory—Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker—as well as the heroes of the Bournonville repertory. Among the latter, James in La Syiphide was one of Bruhn's most beautiful and touching portrayals. His range extended from the poetic youth in Les Syiphides to the mischievous Franz in Coppélia to one of the virtuoso roles in Lander's Études, which he first danced in 1951 and...

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