A new dance year begins with a mixture of old and new, historic and cutting-edge. English National Ballet’s Giselle is a jewel – a 54-year-old production that lovingly evokes the Romantic era from which the ballet sprang. The Resolution festival at the Place, now in its 35th year, is a balancing pleasure, a chance for emerging artists to find their feet, cut their teeth and try something new. Both show the vitality of dance at the beginning of 2025.
Mary Skeaping (1902-84) created her Giselle in 1971 as an act of reconstructive detective work on a ballet that was first seen in 1841 and underwent many subsequent revisions. Skeaping herself danced in both a production by Anna Pavlova, of whose company she was a member, and one mounted by Nicholas Sergeyev in 1932. She listened to the advice of Tamara Karsavina, famed dancer for Diaghilev.
