On Kirsten Simone

The Danish ballerina has died, at 90

I just heard the news that the Danish ballerina Kirsten Simone has died, at the age of 90. Simone was an important dancer, who bridged the Bournonville, classical, and 20th-century dramatic repertory, including works by Roland Petit and Birgit Cullberg. Erik Bruhn and Henning Kronstam were frequent partners. She also danced quite a bit of Balanchine, including The Four T's, Symphony in C, and La Sonnambula. Later, she became a beloved character dancer at the Royal Danish Ballet, bringing her warmth, intelligence, and wit to roles like the troll queen in A Folk Tale, Berthe in Giselle, and Madge in La Sylphide. (According to Alexei Ratmansky, who befriended her in the 90's, when he was a member of the Danish company, "she was competing with Sorella Englund for greatest Madge of all time.") In the mid sixties, she starred in the Disney TV movie "Ballerina," in which she played herself in the role of the mentor of a young girl who aspires to join the Royal Danish Ballet. Much later, in the nineties and early 2000's, when Ratmansky and his wife Tatiana were members of the company, she mentored them, giving them suggestions on how to approach the Bournonville repertory. When he created his first "Nutcracker" for that company, in 2001, he cast her as a non-dancing Sugarplum in loose pantaloons and a feathered cap. (She was 67 at the time). "We created an entrance for her through the auditorium with a beautiful umbrella over her and little girls spreading rose petals," he said. His "Nutcracker" for American Ballet Theater preserves the essence of the character created by Simone. When I was doing research for my book, several Danish dancers I met told me that when they saw Ratmansky's 2003 ballet "The Bright Stream," one of the comic characters, the plump and flirtatious Dacha Dweller, immediately made them think of Simone. The dancer Gudrun Bojesen remembered that when "The Bright Stream" came to Copenhagen, the two sat together in the audience and laughed through the performance. I also remember that she and Tobi Tobias were great friends, and used to visit each other. I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with Simone in 2018 when I was doing research in Copenhagen. She took me to a restaurant downstairs from her apartment on Nyhavn Harbor, where we had lunch on Royal Copenhagen plates. Then she took me upstairs to her apartment, an enchanted space. it was Christmastime, and her windows were decorated with paper cutouts she had made. (I recently saw at the Metropolitan Museum that Hans Christian Andersen also made these cutouts.) Everything in her apartment was beautiful, elegant, proportional, tasteful. We had fruit cake, over which she poured a generous helping of brandy. She was sharp, funny, clever, and full of stories. I was too shy to ask for her photograph, so I took one of her on the sly as she walked away from me to fetch something.