May 23-29, 2011: L.A., Orange County
May 30 - June 5 2011: San Francisco, Berkeley
June 6-12, 2011: Washington
June 13-19, 2011: New York

Repertoire (as of now)
La Sylphide, Napoli, A Folk Tale, Sleeping Beauty, Etudes, Konservatoriet, Bournoville Variations, Jord, The Lesson and new ballets by Johan Kobborg, Pontus Lidberg and Kim
Brandstrup

Greetings
The tour is a few months away, and tickets are beginning to go onsale or will be onsale in the near future. The official performance schedule for each tour stop will be released sometime this month (February). Schedules for some stops seemed to be have been posted, however these are unofficial until the formal announcement. And of course, one should be aware that changes or substitutions may happen at any point.

Prior to the tour, students from the Royal Ballet School (Copenhagen) will be performing next month (March) in Washington, DC as part of the Kennedy Center's annual showcase of ballet schools. I suspect that these students will also be the performers at the Works in Progress evening in NYC.

Tickets for performances in Orange County, California go onsale April 10:

http://www.scfta.org/home/Events/EventD ... entID=1062

Tickets for the performances in Berkeley are already onsale (and MANY sold already):

http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/perfor ... ce/rdb.php

Tickets for performances in Washington DC (Kennedy Center) go onsale on April 6:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/ ... vent=BLBSH

Marina Harss posts program information for the three programs that will be performed in New York, June 14-19, 2011 in the Faster Times.

The Faster Times

The official repertory along with links to info on the ballets has been posted by the RDB:

http://kglteater.dk/Alle_forestillinger ... sc_lang=en

Heather Watts writes a feature on the 2011 U.S. tour in Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair

In the Orange County Register, Paul Hodgins interviews Artistic Director Nikolaj Hubbe prior to the company's May 24-29 tour stop at Costa Mesa's Segerstrom Hall.

OC Register

Kevin Berger interviews Nikolaj Hubbe in the Los Angeles Times.

LA Times

The official tour blog site: http://rdballet.blogspot.com/

In the Orange County Register, Paul Hodgins reviews the Tuesday, May 24 mixed repertory program at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.

OC Register

I saw the Wednesday mixed rep in Orange County. They looked like a smalltime regional company.

It was interesting seeing Bournonville Variations, put together from class exercises with class music, but the all-male cast weren't on their legs: lots of hopping around, even in things like standing in B+! The company just looked sloppy throughout the night, with people falling over and down, and bumping each other.

Elo's "Lost on Slow" was a bit insubstantial, and was danced without any sharpness or attack. Maybe that's what he intended, but they looked like ballet dancers doing modern, and not in a good way. The lighting and stage effects were interesting though, but they promised much more than the choreography and dancing delivered.

Johan Kobborg's pair of pieces looked like the bastard child of SYTYCD and Flower Festival of Genzano, except SYTYCD's faux emo-angst was replaced by unicorns and rainbows. It was fluffy and cute, but the dancing was witless and not musically interesting. You'd see similar stuff in a school recital.

Uotinen's Earth should be placed in a time machine, and sent back to the 80s where it would only be slightly less hackneyed. A dance with old-fashioned-looking modern vocab set to Metallica played by a cello trio and drum kit, this thing was an embarrassment. The choreography was hackneyed, repetitive, and simplistic --- how many times can you make the all-male cast dance in unison? Probably as many times as I facepalmed myself and hoped that this time, the curtain would finally come down. The dancers also were not moving with an attack and phrasing that was idiomatic to the choreography. They kept their soft quality that served them well in the Bournonville extracts, but it was dissonant with this piece.

I don't understand the programming decision behind this program: it showed the company in a bad light, and didn't bring us anything particularly unique to the company. I really hope Napoli is a giant step up from this, otherwise this will be one of the biggest disappointments in a long time.

Lewis Segal reviews the Tuesday, May 24 mixed repertory performance in the Los Angeles Times.

LA Times

I would point out - thanks, I assume to fairly rigid scheduling requirements in Copenhagen and in the US, that the company had less than three days (two days?) to recover before the first performance. Their last performances in Copenhagen was on the 19th, and then they had to fly to Los Angeles with a stopover in New York.

It's also the end of their performing year, and the company performs a LOT more than any company in the US.

If I remember correctly, Kobborg was intended to choreography one longer piece for the company, but for reasons never clarified, created a short, fairly insubstantial piece and re-used a piece he'd created for Royal Ballet. I've not seen either, but by all accounts, I think the company got the short end of the stick and Kobborg probably won't have the welcome mat rolled out again. To be honest, I get a bit irritated when he gets all the attention for his Bournonville stagings - Thomas Lund is as brilliant a dancer and far more dedicated to Bournonville, but has gotten much less attention because he stayed with the RDB.

Anyway, I think they'll be in better form for Napoli (which is not the traditional version!) and for the next tour stops.

I happen to like Elo, but it's a matter of taste. And RDB, not being a company based on touring, tends to program for a European/Scandinavian audience. Who do tend to like Elo and Uotinen.