August Bournonville

August Bournonville (1805–1879) was a Danish dancer and choreographer who dominated Danish ballet for over half a century as Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Ballet, and whose aesthetic and technical legacy remains a defining influence on the art form. Born in Copenhagen to a French father who was also a ballet master, he trained in Copenhagen and Paris under Auguste Vestris, and became one of the foremost male dancers of the Romantic era. He returned to Copenhagen in 1829 and set about building the Royal Danish Ballet into one of the world's great companies. His choreographic works — Napoli (1842), La Sylphide (1836, his own version of the Taglioni original), Konservatoriet (1849), and Far from Denmark (1860) among them — are characterised by joyful, buoyant allegro work, sophisticated male technique, and a warmth of dramatic expression. The Bournonville style, taught to this day at the Royal Danish Ballet School, is one of the most distinctive and carefully preserved traditions in all of ballet.