I’ve written about the ballet “Etudes” before, but now I want to hone in on one of my very favorite parts of it, the mazurka, in particular one of the male solos.

“Etudes” is a ballet choreographed in 1948 by Harald Lander, a Dane, and originally performed by the Royal Danish Ballet. I like the music. I like the slightly folkdance-y feel of some the choreography (a mazurka was originally a Polish folk dance) mixed with the strict and demanding classicism.

And I always like to compare and contrast one dancer’s performance to another.

So first we have the Royal Danish Ballet’s 2005 performance, featuring a man I believe is Kenneth Greve (all big hunky Danes look alike to me, although they all look pretty good). The Royal Danish Ballet has a long tradition of elegance, clean and simple lines, and restraint, and this clip shows off those qualities. The whole video is well worth watching, but I call your attention to the part that has the variation I’m going to compare, minutes 0:51 to around 2:40. Note that at one point in the middle of his variation he seems to be getting a mite behind the music and has to play a bit of catch-up:

Now we have his Danish predecessor Eric Bruhn, from the mists of antiquity: 1969. I remember Bruhn well; he was considered one of the greatest dancers of his time. His style was very different from that of today’s dancers—very restrained, very precise, very refined and controlled. It’s seemingly unemotional, but I prefer to call it Apollonian as opposed to Dionysian. Unfortunately this clip is of abominable quality, so much so that even I—as familiar as I am with Bruhn and his work—am not completely sure it’s Bruhn I’m watching here who does the main solo. At any rate, whether it’s Bruhn or Flindt (more likely the former), observe how he never sacrifices musicality for the sake of technique (the part to focus on begins at 1:38; for some reason I was unable to change the start time when I embedded it):

Bruhn is one of very few dancers in all the versions of the variation that I’ve watched (and I watched tons more than appear in this post) who does his double air turns on the music (at 2:13, for example) and doesn’t lag behind. Also, watch him finish the pirouette sequence and then have the presence and balance to do a little developpe to the front with an accent right at the end of it, smack on the music at 1:50.

The following is a 2007 performance by the Russian dancer Vladimir Shklyarov of the Mariinsky Ballet (the sequence begins at 0:15). In the Russian style, he is very flamboyant and dramatic; exciting. In the modern style, he is very exaggerated and elastic yet strong. However, in his eagerness to strut his stuff, his musicality suffers and he sometimes lags, especially towards the latter part of the variation, where at moments he appears to tire. This causes a disconnect (for me, anyway) rather than expressing the seamless whole of dance, dancer, and music:

Lastly, we have Jeffrey Cirio of the Boston Ballet, whose performance I’ve seen in person and enjoyed tremendously. He doesn’t have the natural advantages of some of the other dancers—he’s short and doesn’t have that elegant long line. Alas, this video (the only one of him doing this that I could find) was taken from a bad angle and has extremely poor lighting, too, so you can only see only a pale (literally) version of what made his performance so fine. Nevertheless I think you can still tell how musical he is; he doesn’t fight the music at all like some of the others. He also demonstrates an impressive combination of expressiveness, excitement, strength, and ease of technique (he never ever seems to be straining for his explosive effects) that is rare. And he lends the dance that slight “character” folkdance-y flair that gives it a special oomph:

Do you have a favorite?