Making romance real
Royal Ballet star Johan Kobborg is producing ‘La Sylphide’ for the new season. He tells Laura Thompson why he believes traditional pieces still have lots of interesting things to say
Proximity to great dancers is a humbling thing. I am sitting in a small room at the top of the Royal Opera House with Johan Kobborg, the 33-year-old Dane who is one of the principal artists of the Royal Ballet.
Relaxed in his loose black sweats, he looks much like any other fit young man one might see loping through London. Yet all the time I am conscious of what he can actually do.
I have seen Kobborg - together with his on and offstage partner, Alina Cojocaru - dance most of the great ballets, and I keep thinking of the power with which this neatly built, courteous, intelligent man commands the stage beneath us.
I also have in mind that he could, if he chose, suddenly uncoil from the sofa and execute the world’s most perfect multiple entrechat.
Kobborg has a natural, thoroughbred talent: I have never seen him put a foot wrong. Although he did not dance seriously until the age of 16, he became the “number one in Denmark” before moving to the Royal in 1999.
“I needed to find something else that I didn’t quite know whether I could do. There’s only so many times you can dance Napoli [from the classic Danish repertoire]. I knew I wanted to do character ballets.”
Kobborg had been turned down by the Royal in 1994 and, when he finally arrived, success was not instant. “I don’t look like Jonathan Cope [a tall, imposing dancer], and if that was the norm for doing Manon then, my God, I knew I would have to fight for it.”
But the partnership with Covent Garden darling Cojocaru - magically gifted, miraculously tiny - took off and opened the way to new roles. “That was instant, yes. I mean, I couldn’t look at Alina in Romeo and Juliet and not like her.”
Confident in his own dancing - what he calls the “casual” Danish style - and in his lovely partner’s “perfect physical intelligence", Kobborg’s profound and subtle artistry began to reveal itself.
So, too, did his presence. He may lack the swagger of an Acosta but in a role like Eugene Onegin he is about as sexy as it gets. Now he moves with ease through a company so rich with talent that it is one of the glories of London.