Adrenaline and Ease: Inside a Dancer’s Ballet Theater Debut

Alban Lendorf has finally arrived. Already a star at the Royal Danish Ballet, Mr. Lendorf, 27, had joined American Ballet Theater as a principal dancer on the same day as Misty Copeland’s promotion, in June 2015. But no sooner had it been announced, than he was sidelined by a knee injury, frustrating audiences whose appetites had been whetted by two previous guest appearances.

But all that is in the past. Mr. Lendorf, who was born and raised in Copenhagen, landed in New York in August, just in time to start looking for an apartment and begin rehearsals. He had his debut as a full member of the company Wednesday night, at the opening of the fall season. (He will continue to dance with the Royal Danish during breaks from Ballet Theater.) At the David H. Koch Theater, Mr. Lendorf stepped into leading roles in two taxing ballets, Frederick Ashton’s pure, neoclassical “Symphonic Variations” and Twyla Tharp’s ebullient “Brahms-Haydn Variations.” In the Tharp, especially, he seemed elated, his movements clean and muscular, his partnering illuminated by an easy charm and gallantry. He and Isabella Boylston, looked as though they had been dancing together for years, not weeks.

On Saturday afternoon, he will take on another challenging role: the central figure in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Serenade After Plato’s Symposium,” an extraordinary and complex work set to Leonard Bernstein’s violin concert of the same name.

After the final curtain on Wednesday, still drenched in sweat, feet red and raw, Mr. Lendorf sat down in his dressing room to talk about his first night as a full member of the company. Below are edited excerpts from that conversation.

How do you feel?

I’m full of adrenaline so I’m great. But in one hour, I’m going to drop.

It looked like you had really great chemistry with your partner, Isabella Boylston, in “The Brahms-Hayden Variations.” Was that just acting?

She’s very vivid and energetic onstage, and I like that. I was a little nervous, and with the adrenaline, we were both really pumped. I had some, what do you say, little blackouts, like half a second. But then you continue, it’s fine, and people can’t see it.

What was the hardest thing on the program for you tonight?

“Symphonic Variations,” definitely. The costumes are white. It’s very unforgiving. You can see mistakes right away. It’s very clean and you have to be together. We weren’t perfect but we were getting there.

And the sparkly headpiece you have to wear in that ballet ...

Terrible, terrible, really. [Laughs]

Why did you decide to come to Ballet Theater?

I think for someone like me, you have to take some kind of leap of faith and leave home. I’ve seen my colleagues who work in Copenhagen who are from Brazil or Australia, how they develop as human beings. And I wanted that for myself, before it was too late. And New York is a city where there’s room for everything, for every personality, for dance, for art, for everything.

Were you just waiting for the right offer?

No, I came to them. After I guested with the company in 2014 I sent Kevin [McKenzie, the director of Ballet Theater] an old-fashioned letter through the mail. I wanted to be as honest as possible. I’ve never done an audition in my life or asked for a job. So I wanted to put myself out there and be vulnerable. He could have said no.

Not long after you were hired, you got injured.

It felt terrible — you join a new company and you want to show who you are and give it your all. But I couldn’t, so I went back to Denmark and got surgery. It’s definitely a knock to your identity and your ego and your self-confidence.

You’ve had to learn a lot of new works in just a few weeks.

Yeah, especially the Ratmansky piece, “Serenade After Plato’s Symposium,” which was difficult to learn. It’s a lot of steps and he uses his own vocabulary so it’s hard to write it down or explain. You just have to work with the ballet master and Alexei [Ratmansky].

The role was made for dancers who are quite different from you: Jeffrey Cirio and Herman Cornejo. Does that make it difficult to walk into?

Jeffrey and Herman are very fast — I definitely had to do my best to get that quickness. But Alexei allows us to do our own interpretation. He changed tiny things here and there and let me do my thing.

Are there any big differences between Ballet Theater and the Royal Danish that you’ve noticed so far?

In Denmark, we have this think called Janteloven (Jante’s law), or “tall poppy syndrome,” where no one is supposed be treated differently than anybody else. There’s more respect for principals here, more of a hierarchy. When I first went up to the barre in class at A.B.T. and I asked a guy “can I stand here?” he looked at me like, “why are you asking me this? Of course, you’re a principal.” It’s not like that in Denmark.

Are you going to miss dancing the Danish repertory, all those great 19th-century August Bournonville ballets?

Bournonville can be the most wonderful thing in the world, but it’s a good thing to get away from it — that way you miss it.

What will you do after this interview?

I’m definitely going to go home and have just one small beer. A nice cold pilsner.