Giselle is the greatest of the pre-Tchaikovsky ballets: before Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, this Parisian creation sealed the pact between virtuoso dance and stirring drama.
The story of an innocent country girl betrayed by her aristocratic lover, but who nonetheless protects him from beyond the grave, it offers both rural semi-realism and a pack of corpse brides out for revenge.
Any production that seeks fidelity to the 1841 original must honour that first blood-racing compulsion – heartbreak and supernatural chills combining to thrilling effect. This diligent, lovingly-detailed revival may tweak the heart, but won’t break it.English National Ballet first performed this production in 1971. It was directed by Mary Skeaping, who danced in Anna Pavlova’s production of Giselle and was a devoted archaeologist of the original ballet by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot.
She restored neglected and mangled passages (mime sequences and peasant dances) – but just like theatre directors who attempt a full-text Hamlet, what you gain in detail you sacrifice in propulsion.The orchestra under Gavin Sutherland get their elbows into the vigorous overture – but speeds elsewhere tend to the glacial, Adolphe Adam's romantic flurries slowed to a crawl. Even so, the designs are entrancing – harvest time in bucolic bronze and russet, and a dense midnight forest glade, light sighing through the branches (credit to David Walker’s sets and David Mohr’s lighting).
The dancing is elegant throughout, and Katja Khaniukova, leading the opening night cast, makes an exceptional heroine.The plot is a rom-com gone wrong. Giselle’s instincts are for happiness – she’s skipping seconds after her first entrance. She deserves better than posh Albrecht (Aitor Arrieta), who arrives in a swirl of self-regard, disguised as a poor student, although he’s actually on the verge of a suitable marriage (what is Albrecht’s endgame? Posh polyamory? Or just a tumble in the straw and hasty exit?).
When the deception falls apart, Giselle, who previously sweetly hid her blushes in her hands, now hides her confusion. With everyone’s eyes pressing on her, she hurtles through the throng and dies of heartbreak.In the second act, remorseful Albrecht visits Giselle’s woodland grave, but finds the wilis – vengeful ghosts of jilted brides, in misty tulle and pallid wings. Led by Alison McWhinney’s severe Myrtha, ice in her every step, they threaten to dance him to death – only Giselle’s spirit can save him.
Khaniukova initially seems jerky, as if coming to terms with her dead-girl limbs (this is after all the age of Frankenstein), but gracefully shelters the man who betrayed her. Hers is a performance of immense integrity – she dances her truth, even if it is an unhappy one.London Coliseum, to January 21; londoncoliseum.org
