Velikan svjetske baletne scene Peter
Schaufuss, bio je i na zagrebačkoj sceni
u listopadu 1972. kada je na poziv tadašnjega
ravnatelja Baleta HNK gospodina Frane Jelinčića, gostovao u ulozi Princa
Albrechta u izvedbi baleta Giselle.
I sada uz najnoviju obnovu slavnoga Adamova djela
na zagrebačkoj sceni, vrijedno je pripasti pažnjom i djelu Petera Schaufussa.
Peter Schaufuss
http://www.schaufuss.com/pages/artikel.asp?articleguid=25400
http://www.schaufuss.com/pages/artikel.asp?articleguid=25086&MenuGuid=9865
Mr. PETER SCHAUFUSS
Peter Schaufuss
started at the Royal Danish Ballet School when he was 7 years old, and, as an
apprentice, had his debut with the company in DON QUIXOTE’s pas de deux, after
which he was taken into the company. Shortly afterwards, he was offered a
soloist’s contract at the Canadian National Ballet and after two seasons he
returned to Copenhagen, before being invited to London Festival Ballet as
principal dancer. In this period Schaufuss established himself as an
international guest dancer within the entire classical repertoire, in companies
including the Kirov Ballet in St Petersborg and American Ballet Theatre in New
York, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Ballet in London. He also worked with the New York City Ballet and George Balanchine,
who created two ballets for him. Other
leading choreographers who choreographed specifically for Schaufuss were Roland Petit (The Paris Opera), Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Sir
Frederick Ashton
Schaufuss has
produced Bournonville’s FOLKTALE, NAPOLI and LA SYLPHIDE in addition
to GISELLE and the three Tchaikovsky classics SWAN LAKE, SLEEPING BEAUTY and THE NUTCRACKER for companies including
Berlin Ballet, Deutsche Oper Berlin, National Ballet of Canada, English
National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, San Carlo Opera Ballet, Naples,
Stuttgart Ballet, Vienna Opera Ballet, Roland Petit Ballet Company, Marseille,
La Scala, Milano, Florence Opera Ballet, Ater Balletto, Rome Opera Ballet,
Wiesbaden Ballet, Zurich Ballet and Ballet West in Salt Lake City. He has also created his own ballet of
Shakespeare’s HAMLET.
Schaufuss has worked
as dancer, Director and choreographer in
a number of television programmes, and has had his own 4-part television serial
for the BBC in England,
which was then broadcasted around the world. He has won a number of
international awards in recognition of his contribution to the international
ballet scene including the Olivier & the Evening Standard Awards. In 1988 he was knighted in Denmark, and in 1995 was made an
Officer of the Belgian Order of La Couronne.
After being Director
of the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet) where he founded
the English National Ballet School, Berlin Ballet at Deutsche Oper Berlin and
the Royal Ballet in Copenhagen, Schaufuss established his own company, the
Peter Schaufuss Ballet.
The company is based in Holstebro,
Denmark, and is the first
independent, international touring ballet company in Denmark. THE TCHAIKOVSKY TRILOGY
(Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty & The Nutcracker), the company’s opening
pieces, have toured extensively within Denmark, and also internationally to
Spain, Germany, Norway, Edin-burgh, London, Paris, Istanbul & Hong Kong to great
public and critical acclaim, winning the Randa award and the Star Prize in
Esbjerg as the public’s favourite production of 1997. Schaufuss has followed
the success of the TCHAIKOVSKY TRILOGY with many performances since then, and
the company still enjoys the audience successes nationally and internationally.
Meeting Ballet Legend
Peter Schaufuss
http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article.aspx?art_id=5957
Irish and UK
audiences will be familiar with the names of great acting, writing and
directing dynasties like Cusack, Amis and Coppola. Less evident, however, may
be that of the Schaufuss family, which has occupied the top echelons of the
Danish classical ballet world since the 1950s.
In his day, Peter
Schaufuss was a virtuoso soloist and an international ballet superstar. He
joined the Royal Danish Ballet School at the tender age of seven and rose
through the ranks to become its principal dancer and a guest artiste, much
sought after by companies like the Kirov, the Paris Opera and London's Royal
Ballet.
A former director of
the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), Berlin Ballet and the
Royal Ballet in Copenhagen, in 1997 he established the Peter Schaufuss Ballet, based
not in the capital city but in the town of Holstebro, from where it operates as
the country's first independent international touring ballet company.
Belfast ballet fans will have their first
encounter with the work of this charismatic figure when the company makes its
debut appearance at the Grand Opera House from September 16 – 21. On the
programme are two iconic pieces from the classical repertoire, one of which
holds special relevance in the heart of the Schaufuss family.
At the start of the
week, the curtain will rise on Schaufuss's edgy, controversial take on Swan Lake,
the first in the Tchaikovsky Trilogy, with which he opened the company's
account 13 years ago. Then it will be the turn of Romeo and Juliet – not the
world famous, Bolshoi-inspired version but the creation of the great British
dance maker Sir Frederick Ashton, which was premiered in 1955 in Copenhagen by the Royal
Danish Ballet.
In it, the roles of
Juliet and Mercutio were danced respectively by the Danish ballet stars Mona
Vangsaae and Frank Schaufuss. They were Peter's parents. In this revival, Romeo
will be danced by his 19-year-old son Luke Schaufuss. And in the London premiere at the
Coliseum last summer, Luke's sister Tara was cast in the role of Mercutio's
girlfriend.
'This ballet is
extremely precious to me and to us as a family,' says Schaufuss senior. 'My
parents danced in the very first production. I have danced Romeo many times
myself, and now Luke will represent the third generation, which will be great
for us all.'
'It's an honour to be
asked to do it,' adds Luke. 'As an artist, I enjoy taking on all kinds of
different roles with different challenges. But, of course, it is a big thing to
follow in the footsteps of my dad and my grandparents.'
Of even greater
artistic significance is the fact that on his death in 1988, Ashton bequeathed
the work to Schaufuss. 'It is a great honour and a great responsibility to look
after it and see that it is done properly for future generations,' he admits.
'The version that will be performed in Belfast
is the one that I have revived for my own company and which was done at the
Coliseum in July last year.
'I knew Sir Fred from
the time that I was a small child. I could not help being influenced by his
guiding spirit, because he was a great friend of my parents. When I came to London in 1970 to be the director of the London Festival Ballet our friendship
continued and deepened. He was very dear to me.'
Schaufuss describes
how Ashton, as chief choreographer at the Royal Ballet, was forbidden from
creating his own version of Romeo and Juliet for Covent Garden by its then
artistic director, the redoubtable Ninette de Valois (who was born Edris
Stannus in Blessington, County Wicklow).
'At the time, the
Bolshoi was gifting its production to the company and Dame Ninette de Valois
was afraid that a new version would be compared to it. So [Ashton] went to Copenhagen and did it
there. The Bolshoi's original 1895 production influenced many subsequent
stagings, but this version is very different. Sir Fred had only Shakespeare and
Prokoviev's score for inspiration, and his own great genius, of course.
'I have not in any
way touched it. I have tried to keep it the way it was. When it was premiered
in 1955, the set and scenery were very cumbersome and complicated. They got in
the way of the performance. Sir Fred was critical of his own production in that
respect. He wished that it could have been somehow tightened. When we restaged
it at the Coliseum, it was more streamlined, but beyond that I have continued
along the path set by him.'
It has become
somewhat fashionable in the ballet world to craft new reworkings of the
so-called Tchaikovsky Trilogy – Swan
Lake, Sleeping Beauty and
Nutcracker. Indeed Matthew Bourne's ground-breaking productions have been among
the Opera House's most successful imports of recent years. But Schaufuss was
the first to take up the gauntlet, identifying the bond that exists between the
three.
'They are tied together
as the continuous effort of a musical genius,' Schaufuss says. 'They show the
development of Tchaikovsky's life both as an artist and a human being.'
It was Schaufuss's
bold, sometimes explicit exploration of the composer's tormented personal and sexual
life, which got the London critics in quite a
lather when Swan Lake
was performed in London
last year.
The swan hunt became
something of a turkey shoot as, one after another, they vied for the most
scathing expressions of their dislike for the piece. 'Certificate 15 Swan Lake'
read one headline. Unsurprisingly, Schaufuss says he does not read reviews and
is entirely philosophical in his response to the criticism.
Personally, I was not
surprised. When you bring something to London
which is a little bit different, you pay the price from the critics who are
looking from a different angle. Maybe they are traditionalists. There were good
reviews too, but the bad ones get all the attention. In this day and age, the
media is all so different. There are things that go up on YouTube and the
internet and they are there forever. You can't avoid them.
'The worst thing is
to have the critics directing your productions. The first performance of Swan Lake
by the Bolshoi was not a success. It had very bad notices, for the dance, the
scenery, even the music. There are many other examples that you could find.'
Schaufuss has been
labelled 'the wild card of the dance world' and, certainly, the back catalogue
of his prolific company contains a large number of surprising new ballets, many
of them based on larger-than-life figures from popular culture – Marilyn
Monroe, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Elvis among them.
There is an
adaptation of the 1980s movie Midnight Express, as well as The Who's rock opera
Tommy, in which Luke danced the role of the pinball wizard. There is even a
trilogy based on the British Royal Family, of which only the first two about
Diana and Charles have been produced. So, is the 'wild card' label one that he
is happy to live with?
'It's interesting
that people say that about me. I don't walk around thinking about it. I do new
things, that's for sure. I want to make ballets for today's audiences, not in Copenhagen but outside the
capital. Using popular culture is a way of bringing in people who have never
been to a live performance before. I want to them to come again and again. I
have been very successful in doing that.
He laughs at the way
his incomplete Royal trilogy may have been given new life by the recent arrival
of the infant Prince George of Cambridge.
'The third piece,
which has been tried out as just one act, is about William the king. It in, I
have him marrying and having a child. This was a few years ago, before it
happened in real life. It's funny to be talking about that now. Maybe I will go
back to it and finish it one of these days.
'I particularly
enjoyed making the ballet about Diana, as I knew her quite well. She was the
patron of English National Ballet under my directorship. She was passionate
about dance and was a good amateur dancer herself.'
He also points out
that in the performance of the unfinished piece about William, Luke danced the
role of the young prince. He agrees that his talented son is somewhat more
handsome and crowned with a fuller head of hair than the second in line to the
throne, adding '... and Luke is a much better dancer than William!'
Swan Lake runs in the
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Dancer Episode 4 "Peter Schaufuss" (Part 1/4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEY-51sBAR8
Dancer Episode 4 "Peter Schaufuss" (Part 2/4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvQCoZRp2_s
Dancer Episode 4 "Peter Schaufuss" (Part 3/4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6ki6r5JN4
This is a documentary about the famous ballet legend
"Peter Schaufuss.
Dancer Episode 4 "Peter Schaufuss" (Part 4/4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V6jPU4jlKM
photos…
https://www.google.hr/search?q=peter+schaufuss&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8W_eUv_HI4WzywPAag&ved=0CCgQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=639