Ballet with the Queen

Today is the first of the two ballet performances that I will be attending while I'm here.  Tonight's show will be all about the men.  Because I anticipate a late night, I'm hoping to have a relaxing day.  I'm still not sleeping through the night (now I know how babies feel...) and I'm hungry at weird times.  I was going to try the Frilandsmuseet (Open Air Museum) today but I think I've had enough historic houses, and I want to send some postcards to my nieces and nephews so I decided to check out the Danish Design Center which is near the train station.  The sky is mostly clear today and it's chilly this morning but not as bad as yesterday.  

The DDC is in a small modernist little building near the city hall.  The exhibition on now is showing some current innovative design coming out of Denmark.  I'm not sure these items match up to some of the 60s classics from their fellow countrymen (there is an exhibit of Danish classics in the basement).  Since that didn't take long, I notice the 'hop on hop off' buses are lined up near by.  They are a reasonable way to see a neighbourhood quickly so I get on the one heading to Christianshaven and the islands adjacent to the city.  Christiania is one of the places frequently mentioned in the guidebooks as a hippie haven.  They kind of govern themselves.  It appears to be a walled off compound of cottages, mobile homes and shacks.  The island on which the Opera House is located has a lot of former military barracks and buildings but there are also these little plots of land where apartment dwellers can make a garden.  Most of the plots also have a little building that the gardeners have put up to enhance their enjoyment of their little bit of paradise.  From the top of the 2 decker bus, we can see right into these gardens and they are just adorable, well maintained, some exceptionally creative.

After a quick (and pricey for what it is) lunch of sausage and bottled water, I head for the shopping street, this time with a goal-find some amber jewelry.  The places I've seen so far seem to only offer high priced merchandise.  They also all seem to have asian (Chinese?) staff, which I find curious.  I pop my head into a couple of places that all have an intimidating air about them, but in the final one I go to, the sales lady asks me where I'm from and it turns out that she is originally from Taiwan.  She's been living in Denmark for about 20 years, speaks Danish and English, and told me the reason all the amber shops have chinese staff is because amber is extremely popular with the chinese-speaking tourists!  I have a conversation with her mostly in Chinese, helping me find some reasonably priced products and learning how to get a refund on the tax (which like most European countries is high).  Who knew that would happen in Denmark??

The sun is coming out so I head to Frederiksberg Have (Garden).  It's a peaceful and pretty bit of greenery with lots of water birds (herons, ducks, geese, and somewhere at least one peacock).  Not a lot of flowers though, it's mostly lawn, trees, creek.  And the lawn is not perfectly manicured.  Bulbs have been planted in many areas among the grass and to my eyes there are all kinds of weedy things mixed in there.  There is a palace at one end of this garden but it's not open in the way some of the others are.  There are a ton of palaces and castles in Copenhagen and surroundings.

I take my usual afternoon respite and dinner is my left over half sandwich from yesterday.  The ballet is performing in the new Opera House which is across the water via ferry from the end of Nyhavn, very close and convenient to my hotel.  The fee is covered with my transit flex card.  The building is a beautiful glass structure with an interior wood enclosed performance space.  There are three beautiful dichroic glass globe light chandeliers and the whole place is elegantly minimal.  The Danes are not fancy people so the restaurant is a roped off area of the main lobby with minimalist Danish chairs and tables, but serving a fancy 3 course meal.  A bar serves alcohol, snacks and hot beverages but there are not a lot of chairs.  Turns out Danes are pretty comfortable standing around, as I noticed when the pre-performance lecture was going on, everyone simply gathered around the speaker, standing in an area of the balcony while he talked (in Danish, so I didn't learn anything).  Dress code is fairly casual and slightly offbeat.  The theatre is a traditional set up, with a horseshoe shaped first balcony, which is where my seats are located.  The prices are very reasonable.  I'm at the very end of the right hand leg of the balcony.  On the other side, the chairs have the royal crown symbol, must be the royal family's box.  Turns out, it is, because as an elegant older woman enters the box, everyone in the theatre stands.  It's the Queen! Her presence adds a certain energy to the evening.

Tonight's show will have 5 ballets with all men (a woman appears at the end of the final dance).  The choreographers are a varied lot-Bournonville, Peter Martins, Jerome Robbins, Jose Limon and someone unknown to me (probably a contemporary Danish dance maker).  Wonderful dancers and a nice mix of dance styles.  Each bow is to the Queen first, then the audience.  And I do mean every single time.  At one of the intermissions, I chat with the lady in front of me about the down-to-earth nature of the Danish royals, traveling (she visits the US frequently), the ceilings in the auditorium (she works for Chicago Metallic who made the product they used and is a company I'm familiar with), and living in Denmark.  Danes may not be the most gregarious people but they are exceptionally friendly once you start talking to them. 

After the curtain falls, those of us who need to make a mad dash for the ferry back to Nyhavn, and I'm now highly anticipating Saturday's performance by the women of the company.