Martin is a history teacher with the apathetic and leaning posture of a comma. He walks slowly, as if each step unleashes a wave of pain. Your work is not inspiring; your marriage is falling apart. “Did I become boring?” he asks his wife. “Do you think I’m boring?”
Her answer seems to confirm what he already knows: “You are not the same Martin I met”.
In the film “Another Round” by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, about breaking the rules and, in doing so, breaking free, Martin is one of four high school teachers who decide to test a theory about alcohol: as long as they keep a level of it in the blood, their lives will improve.
The experiment has its problems. But in the end Martin, played by Mads Mikkelsen, finds release, which comes in a dance at the end of the film. The dance, a little drunk, shows Mikkelsen’s agile ability to balance boldness and control. It is appropriate: he was once a professional dancer.
The dance begins after Martin, who has taken jazz ballet lessons in the past, attended a friend’s funeral and received text messages from his wife suggesting a reunion; he and his friends greet the students trained in the port while the song “What a Life”, by the Danish band Scarlet Pleasure, is played. At first, your movement is a little hesitant, full of stops and starts. But as soon as he starts, he throws himself at him, taking long, crossed steps, swaying and, with a silky vigor, spinning to the floor and jumping – all the while taking sips from a beer can.
As his body melts to the beat of the song, it’s clear that this is more than a dance: Martin has been given another chance – or round – in life, and he’s enjoying it. Uninhibited and robust, Mikkelsen, 55, fires through space, punching the air and jumping hard before taking off in a spectacular jump over the water. The film ends with him in the air.
When working with Mikkelsen, choreographer Olivia Anselmo said: “He started the whole rehearsal by saying, ‘Well, I am not like before, I am no longer young and blah, blah, blah.’ And then the first thing he does is slip and roll on the floor and jump and do that thing where he wraps his leg around the other leg – like a yoga pose. He just did This one.”
Mikkelsen started out as an acrobat before discovering dance, but it was as an actor that he made his name. He was the villain of Bond in “Casino Royale” and Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the television series “Hannibal”. He won the award for best actor in Cannes for his role in the Vinterberg film “The Hunt” (2012). But for Anselmo, he is something else. “When I was in the studio with him, it’s not like I’m thinking, wow, this is a world-famous actor,” she said. “It was so cozy and cold. I just thought, this is just another dancer. “
Mikkelsen recently spoke about dance and his years of professional dance, which lasted about nine years. He switched to drama, he said, “to open a different drawer and find something new,” he said. “I have also always been more passionate about dance drama than dance aesthetics.”
The following are edited excerpts from a recent conversation.
How did you feel dancing in the movie?
I thought it would be a difficult thing to get away with in a realistic movie – really dancing. So in my world, it was more like a drunken dream or a drunken image or fantasy, but in Thomas’s world, it was literally a man dancing while he was surrounded by many young people. [Laughs]
He wanted the ending to be a balance between a man flying and a man falling and, obviously, the dance was perfect for that.
How did you start dancing in the first place?
I started out as a gymnast and there was a choreographer coming to our club. She wanted some acrobats in the background who could do flips and she wanted us to do a few steps too. She thought I had a certain talent and asked me if I wanted to learn the trade, but I had absolutely nothing else to do.
I did some shows with her, kind of musical stuff, and then I felt like I had to pay homage to the dance. I really had to learn from the base.
Where did you study?
I applied for a scholarship and went to New York for two summers for Martha Graham. So, I joined a contemporary ballet group in Denmark and did a ton of musicals like “La Cage Aux Folles” and “Chicago”. “West Side Story.” But I was trained as a contemporary Martha Graham dancer.
Was Martha around? She must have been very old.
Yes. I had the opportunity to meet you. It was a miraculous moment. She was obviously not a teacher [anymore], but she once appeared as the guru she was, with her arthritis. She was helped out of the car. She was stunning. She had huge hair. She sat on the floor and watched us. And suddenly, she started to make one of her movements – her spine was completely straight and she put her nose on the floor.
It is magic.
We were all like, what? And then she made all the boys come very close because she didn’t speak out. She said, “Boys must jump in the air.” And then we went in there and we jumped and jumped and jumped, and then we looked at her, and she was asleep. [Laughs] But it was fantastic, Fantastic to get to know her.
When did you start gymnastics?
I was probably in the first or second grade. You have to understand, gymnastics in Denmark was at a completely different level from the rest of the world in the sense that it was terrible. I remember that there was a Russian club coming to us as a friendship club, and it was just crazy how good they were. It was like, Jesus, we’re wasting our time.
How old were you when you changed to dance?
I think it was around 17 or 18 years old when that happened. So, I was a working-class kid – almost like a Billy Elliot story. I could not really tell my friends what i started doing. That’s how it is when you’re a working-class boy, but then, when they finally found out, I told them to do the math: “How many girls, how many boys?” They all said, “Yes, I also want to be a dancer.”
How was it to dance again in “Another Round”?
It was like saying hi to an old friend. I’m the type of dancer who doesn’t dance when I’m at a club with friends. I’ve always been a little reluctant to do that because, I think, it was my profession. I knew that this character was rusty and he was not a professional dancer like me, but he had done it when he was young, as a child. At the same time, I was a little ambitious.
Did you get hurt?
No, anyway. It was okay. But it was all adrenaline. I felt very young again, but the next week I felt really old.
Why were you sore?
I was super sore. I play many sports. I ride a bike, play tennis and do all kinds of things, but they are not the same muscles.
What were you thinking about in the final dance?
We wanted it not to be about dancing, but about what was inside the character. More than a performance, it is an internal journey. It’s almost like a close-up.