Posted 01 May 2001 - 02:58 AM
I'd say Ferri, Kent, and Mckerrow are a fine trio to have seen...
Apologies if some of what follows is a bit repetitive of things I've said elsewhere...I've tried to vary it somewhat...
The first Giselle for whom I felt deep devotion was Marilyn Burr whom I saw with the National Ballet of Washington. At least one of those performances was certainly with Nagy, but what I remember was being utterly enthralled by Burr, especially in Act II. I have absolutely no idea how she "compares" with greats or even very goods I've seen at a later, savier age (and don't need to); she was part and parcel of what made me love the ballet...I also saw Fracci/Bruhn at a very young age and that performance, too, entered into my imagination in ways I can't quite qualify. But the Fracci Giselle "image" I actually remember most vividly was an appearance ca. 1980 in some gala, doing an excerpt from Act II. She was utterly ghostly almost like a mysterious statue come to life.
From my "adult" ballet going, my favorite was Kirkland (Kirkland-Baryshnikov when they still had a genuine partnership and the lifts in Act II were like little miracles). She was affecting and tender in Act I, extremely detailed in her characterization and dancing, and performed the mad scene with an inner directed pathos that was all too believable. She danced gorgeously in Act II -- loving Albrecht yet possessed by the dance -- and in her jumps she just seemed made of air. (I just reread my previous sentences and they sound sort of trite, especially since those qualities are all suggested by the choreography -- but I'm going to leave them, because I think Kirkland really made those qualities live compellingly on stage.)Definitely a dancer who captured, for me, the requisite qualities for both Acts I and II.
My favorite Albrecht bar none is certainly Nureyev, who did (as has already been discussed) an "unsympathetic" Albrecht with all the charisma, nobility, and rage (at the end of Act I) at his command. With Nureyev, that was a lot. The transformation into and through Act II was all the more overwhelming. His performance gave the ballet a depth and weight that, in my experience, it rarely has. Oddly enough Albrecht is the one nineteenth-century classic role in which I did not care for Dowell. However, I only saw him once -- with Makarova at ABT. At that performance, his facial expressions were oddly, and atypically for Dowell, melodramatic -- he literally seemed to pop his eyes out whenever he wanted to express fear or passion, and his characterization was also of an extremely weak Albrecht. At the end of Act I, he seemed like a crushed boy, practically flopping in his movements. Since I all but worshipped him in every other part I saw him perform, I'd like to think he danced it more effectively at other times, but maybe I just disagreed with his interpretation.
I admired Makarova as Giselle but never quite loved her in the role...We had a thread on recent or contemporary Giselles and two I mentioned there but will mention again are Mckerrow and, in a different but still admirable vein, Vishneva. I saw Mckerrow with Malakhov in an extraordinary performance a couple of seasons back; they were perfectly attuned to one another at every moment. In his Act II leaps Malakhov managed to jump high and beautifully and yet make you feel the weight of flesh and exhaustion that was holding him down. A wonderfully romantic and touching performance from them both. Technically, Vishneva's was probably one of the best danced performances of the ballet I have ever seen -- certainly the best performance of the Act I solo -- but she made the quality of her dancing the key to her interpretation, so it wasn't just showy but really worked within the frame of the ballet. I saw Assylmyratova that same week. There were moments in that performance that were simply as meltingly lyrical and memorable as anything I have ever seen though the performance as a whole did not, for me, gel on quite that level.
Finally, at some Kirov highlights program in Chicago, about ten years ago, I saw Alexander Lunev and Veronika Ivanova dance the Act II pas de deux. They performed in the utterly austere, "old style" Kirov manner. It was like watching a classroom exercise, but done at some unbelievable pitch of purity and exactitude. Absolutely one of most beautiful and moving ballet performances I have ever seen.
[ 05-01-2001: Message edited by: Drew ]
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