A 10-day festival in Copenhagen this month will celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of August Bournonville, the father of Danish ballet, who lived from 1805 to 1879. Master choreographer, great pedagogue and splendid dancer, traveller and producer of operas, proudly Danish - albeit the son of a French ballet-master and Swedish mother - moral man and genius (and the two don't always go together), writer and astute observer, and clearly a charmer, Bournonville and his ballets were little known outside Denmark until 50 years ago.
In effect, he created Danish ballet during the near half-century of his rule at Copenhagen's Royal Theatre. What we shall admire and, yes, love during this summer's celebrations is an extraordinary survival of dances and their dance-style from the 19th century - fascinating, clear in merit, life-enhancing. Nowhere else in Europe is there so pure and so authentic a view of theatre-dance from the past.
