Ballet Gets Crowning Touch

Denmark's Queen Designs Costumes, Sets For "The Tinder Box"

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark, July 13, 2007 | by Mary Jayne McKay

(CBS)  Denmark's Queen Margrethe has added a royal touch to a ballet based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen that opens Saturday at a theater in Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens.

Margrethe has designed the costumes and sets for "The Tinder Box," a half-hour performance being staged at the Chinese-inspired Pantomime Theater. It's the third time the monarch has designed costumes for stage adaptations of Andersen's work.

"It has been incredibly fun to try again," Margrethe told reporters Thursday.

Andersen, whose more famous fairytales include "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Mermaid," wrote "The Tinder Box" in 1835. It's about a soldier who finds a magic tinder box that brings him great riches but also nearly gets him killed.

2Like many of Andersen's stories, it contains violence and includes a passage where the soldier beheads a witch. Margrethe, a graphic artist and scenographer, said she and others involved in the production never considered cutting the most gruesome parts.

"Can you imagine to censor works by Hans Christian Andersen?" the 67-year-old monarch said, laughing. "I have always accepted it when the soldier beheaded the witch. That's the way he is."

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Photos: Royalty around the World

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The 67-year-old queen has a reputation as one of the most intellectual rulers in Europe, having studied at five universities including Cambridge, the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. A trained artist, she illustrated an edition of JRR Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" under a pseudonym.

She has been Denmark's queen since 1972.

The 20-member troupe includes dancers from Europe, Japan, Brazil and Venezuela, who will perform until September.

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