Alexandra

According to Arlette Weinreich, who was the assistant on that Danish production, the second act is pure Kirov, taught to them by Rima Karelskaya (who is Bolshoi, so why she taught them the Kirov is one of the many mysteries of life). But the sensibility is circular. Bournonville hated straight lines. I think, though, that the circles are beyond taste and time, and were quite consciously used because pagan rituals were circular. (One fascinating little tidbit I learned from my first dance history class was that patrilinear societies have linear shapes -- long houses, villages with streets in rows, and dancers in straight lines -- while matrilinear societies have circular shapes -- circular houses, all of the houses arranged in a circle around the campfire, and circular dances.) But French choreographers would have known about Maypole and other rural dances and there was so much research into the European pagan past as part of Romanticism, I think this was quite deliberate.

And, if he had lived in the village for long enough to be really in love with Giselle (or have her be really in love with him) why didn't the local secret police figure out who he was? In the earlier ABT version, it seemed as though this was Albrecht's first day in the village -- Giselle introduced him to the others, the mother was extremely suspicious of him, as well she might be, the Tall Dark Handsome Stranger being the person all good mothers must warn their daughters against. If Albrecht has a hut there, then why don't the villagers know who he is? If the villagers don't know who he is, that means he and Giselle have been fooling around in the brush..... There's also a bit of mime, when Giselle runs out of her cottage in response to Albrecht's knock, that has her go straight up to the door of the hut and courtsey -- SHE knows where he lives. 'Tis a puzzlement. Jane, why does Albrecht need a key while Hilarion, the village break in artist, just walks through the front door (in some productions; in others, he jimmies the window. One Bolshoi production had a sliding window). At first, I just accepted this, but after 200 or so "Giselles" it's become a major dramaturgical annoyance. I want Wilfrid to trudge on and take the "For Sale by Remax" and that cute little red balloon off the front lawn before Albrecht's first entrance. Two solutions I've seen, one low budget, one high are: the Moscow Festival Ballet, which just brought their touring production to the DC area, simply dispensed with the hut. Albrecht dumps his sword and cloak in the woods. (And prances around wearing white shirt and tights and a sparkling silver vest, just what the average Silesian would wear on a Saturday.) Erik Bruhn's production for the Royal Danish in 1978 added what I think is a brilliant solution. He gave the hut to Albrecht's old nurse, now pensioned off and living, with her husband, in the village. It not only triples the adult population of the village, but gives Albrecht an excuse to visit -- he's a kindly boy who still looks in on Nanny -- and a place to change clothes. The know what he's doing, but are both doting and doddering and merely admonish him to be careful.

That video grows on you, Leigh. It is incredibly disjointed -- they dance scenes to the wrong music, sometimes to bits of Mozart's "Don Juan," etc. -- but I learned a lot about the (former) Royal Danish Ballet from it. (Riggins was 19 when that was shot in 1990, I should add.) The video is called "Of Dreams and Discipline" by one of Denmark's leading filmmakers, Anne Wivel (Ulrik's mother) and is commercially available in Europe, both in Danish and English-subtitled versions. Much of the dialogue is in English. It won two European film awards in the early '90s. (Kronstam found the voiceover dialogue false and didn't want to do it, but the filmmaker insisted on leaving it in, and his choice was to do it himself or have someone else's voice dubbed in.) I am glad you guys got to see Mette-Ida's Myrthe, though I've never been clear when the Albrecht-as-cad interpretation came in. In the original libretto, Albrecht loves her -- they don't delve very deeply into how Bathilde fits into that picture, but he does love her and Hilarion is the "vile knave" who ruins everything for Albrecht. I'd love to know how Lifar and Youskevitch played it -- as two of the great mid-century Albrechts -- and how the character evolved in Russia, as well. Like Mary, I was very taken by Nureyev's cad, and thought it made Albrecht's redemption and repentance quite stark. Kronstam always tried to find an interpretation for his character that used everything in a ballet, and work with those elements until he'd figured out how to do it so that there would be no dangling loose ends he'd have to ignore (friends of Bruhn's say that Bruhn did just the opposite, coming up with the interpretation that he believed right for the ballet and cutting anything that got in the way). Kronstam said that he thought Albrecht was sincerely in love, that Giselle was his way to "escape from all the insincerity of his life up there [the castle]" He described the first act as "a flirt that goes bad," meaning that Albrecht didn't mean to cause harm. I would imagine he played it as heedless and irresponsible when he was younger and taking a calculated risk when he was older. He said he never thought the cad version made sense for him. Dowell and Baryshnikov also did the "really in love" approach. Baryshnikov added -- brought in? -- a nice touch, I thought, by going up to Giselle's door, stopping to think for a minute, then starting to knock -- obviously he's going to tell her -- when the hunting party starts to clomp in. A contemporary rather than Romantic touch, but it fits with his character. One of the things I've always loved about Giselle is how porous it is. (To get all my Kronstam/Giselle stories in in one post, I asked him if he thought Albrecht could have ever returned to Bathilde at the end, as he did in the original version, and he said, "No, because I don't think he was a cold person.") It should be difficult to have both the sincere, naive lover and the contemptible cad both work, but different dancers have proven that it's possible. [ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

One example of the circle in Act II is at the beginning that act on the old ABT "Giselle" (Fracci-Bruhn). Myrthe describes a circle -- that whole act "feels" more circular than linear to me. I think this is only speculative theory (as is much of ballet history ) but that the pre-Petipa version would have been much softer, more round. It was Petipa who loved diagonals and straight lines. The Mary Skeaping production was very soft, groupings more like Les and La Syphide, as I remember it.

Thanks for posting that quote, Doug. I haven't read that book (it's on my wish list) but did read Smith's article on "Giselle" in "Rethinking the Sylph" and her articles about "Giselle" in Dance Chronicles--it's important work, I think. The quotation nicely joins the two concepts of "jilted maidens" (or at least those who die before marriage, jilted or not) and love of dancing.

I'm sure this did not trouble the audience in 1840, but has anyone else ever wondered how on earth Albrecht acquired that hut? Eminent domain? Built it overnight? Squatting? What do you think of the hut, and what, if anything, can be done about it? (p.s., thanks everybody for participating -- this forum is off to a great start, and I think will prove to be fun) [ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

There's a wonderful turn-of-the-last-century Danish review complaining (gently, gentlemanly) about Adeline Genee, a Danish dancer who made her career abroad, but came home to dance. Well, she's a nice dancer all right, but isn't she awfully thin? Not like our "charming, chubby ladies of the ballet."

The Wilis have to have loved dancing, not only because it's their weapon of choice, but because their personally-crafted afterlife allows them to dance dance dance every night forever and ever. Unless you take the position that the Wilis, too, are in hell and HATE dancing.... Seriously, I think the "dance of death" -- danse macabre -- is part of the lure of the Wilis.

The circle is used as a choreographic device in Giselle, although not in all productions. (Two I can think of are the circle that Giselle draws with her sword; Hilarion steps into the circle and this is the foreshadowing of his death and, in some productions, the circle that Myrthe and the Wilis describe at the beginning of their grand pas.) What have you seen? Any comments, ideas, lore about the use of the circle in Giselle?

Or, how should Giselle die? Suicide? Shock? Broken heart? Heart attack? All of the above? [ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I've had discussions with friends over this. What are the necessary and sufficient qualifications to be a Wili? Is it that you have a love of dancing? Is it that you are a Jilted Maiden? OR do you have to be a jilted maiden who died of love of dancing???

Does Albrecht really love Giselle? You can answer this question by telling us about productions you've seen (video counts) AND/OR what your ideal Albrecht should be. Also, if anyone knows where in history Albrecht-the-Cad came in, please let us know. [ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I've wanted to have a forum that discusses ballets in detail -- choreography, costumes, sets, mime/dramaturgy, changes, etc. -- for some time and think that we now have enough people who might be interested in both reading and contributing to such a forum. Here's the idea: We'll take a Ballet of the Month (although that "month" could last as much or as little time as we need to exhaust the subject) and use it to compare notes and ask questions about productions of that ballet we've seen. We have people with so many different experiences -- of both time and place -- that I think it could be very interesting. We'll also start to build up a "data base" of information on Giselles that might be both interesting and useful. I thought I'd start with Giselle. I'm going to put up some questions (I'll start with two or three and add more later. Of course, others may ask questions they've always had about Giselle as well). [ 04-15-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I thought Murphy was much better Saturday than Friday -- I think this is to be expected with someone so young; it takes time to "grow into the role." I didn't think she was GREAT, but I thought she was very good. I was sitting about midpoint in the orchestra, and that's perhaps why I liked Jaffe and Stiefel better. I didn't think they made a deathless couple, and I think she's past her prime, but I think it was an acceptable performance from both of them. ("Acceptable" from me is "I have no serious complaints.") I agree that Belosertkovsky was stronger. Both Corella and Stiefel seemed much more mature to me than they had two seasons ago (when Stiefel was last here, and when Corella danced Siegfried) but both Carreno and Belosertkovsky are completely grown up, and it does make a difference. I thought peasant pas was quite well-done last night as well.

I try to give a dancer who's a last-minute substitute -- as Reyes was on Friday night -- a bit of a break, especially as she performed the same role beautifully the next day. To my eyes, Reyes wasn't at fault here. She was paired with someone who is not a good partner in the best of circumstances.

Choosing between Friday night (Kent-Carreno) and Saturday afternoon (McKerrow-Belotserkovsky) would be difficult. I think, in this case, it's simply a matter of personal choice. I'd let them split the gold Were all of you out rolling Easter eggs this weekend??????

Big piece in the NYTimes today by Boston writer Iris Fanger: Tumult at the Top Leaves the Boston Ballet in a Whirl http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/arts/15F...ml?pagewanted=2 Have patience and read through to page 2 of this article, and learn the "ranking" (based on budget and number of dancers only) of several of our major American companies.

Well put, Rick and Nanatchka. Rick, I've observed the same bias against ballet at universities. I've been in classes where we were taught that ballet is not creative; only modern dance is. (This is an article of faith.) Certainly the notion ballet is inherently vicious to women is a popular belief--I remember in a dance history class writing that pointework was the great equalizer in the 1830s, I was nearly stoned (as in they threw metaphoric stones). When I started teaching, I learned the most amazing things from my dance philosophy students -- again, ballet is not creative. Ballet choreographers just pick steps from a book. However, modern dancers CREATE movements. John Martin, of course, wrote the famous "Isadora Duncan was the first expressive dancer." This has led to a belief that (classical) ballet is not expressive, it is merely an academic exercise. I think Rick has hit on some of the reasons for this, and I'd add that dance departments are, for the most part, run by modern dancers. Dance history is taught by modern dancers (1st semester, beginning of time to the Ballet Russe; second semester, total omission of ballet and concentration on "real dance.") These are people with MFAs, without any formal coursework in dance history beyond the course they took where they learned the same things. Couple this with the assumption that modernism is not just the current trend in art, or current manifestation of artistic expression, but that it is the ONLY way one can look at art, and anything that came before it is of historical interest only, and this is another aspect of the "why isn't ballet more popular?" question. Students are taught to scorn ballet. The "Agon" wing of the Balanchine museum is alone permissible -- I know several ballet fans who snuck into the art generally through this door.

Another excellent performance. Again, I'd like someone else to go first [ 04-15-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Well, since no one else volunteered....I thought both of them gave very solid, thoughtful performances and both danced very well, especially in Act II. Corella had much more weight than he did in "Swan Lake," and seemed to be consciously trying to both look and act mature. The jumps were beautiful. Tuttle was as light as one could wish. What was nice about both Kent and Tuttle is that neither was doing a Makarova imitation, something that plagued Giselles in this company for years. The Myrthe, Stella Abrera, was magnificent, I thought: light AND strong, very authoritative, extraordinary performance for a young dancer and I want to see more of her. I'll write more later when I'm back from today's matinee.

Not that any of this will make sense to people who haven't seen the picture (it's in "Dancers You Should Know," a book published about 10 years ago) but I think it's a cabriole -- at least, that's what he said it was. I'd always heard the Bluebird step called "pas de poisson" and thought it was part of the menagerie: pas de chat, pas de cheval, etc. No relation to "fish dives!" But the body is curved in the air, perhaps resembling a leaping fish, if you have a good imagination. I was thinking of this watching Giselle last night -- the step that I've always heard called a soubresaut is certainly similar, although the sequence of jumps is much quicker and the arms are in a different position. One of the many things that mystifies me about ballet terminology is that there are some steps that have different names even though there's only a tiny variation from one to the next, and others (like an arabesque) have the same name whether the leg is at 25, 45, 55, or 180 degrees.

I think that all too often the way pantomime is performed it's quite understandable that people would laugh -- it's not believable. I think there's definitely a school of theatergoing that thinks it old-fashioned and silly, but I don't think that's a very sophisticated attitude (didn't mean to imply that you were implying you did, Drew To me, it's the flip side of those people who wander through the Hirschorn and say, loudly, to impress, "Looks like a monkey did that" or "Gosh! It's just like wallpaper," and then laugh, as though they've just invented something terribly clever.

I thought it might be a good idea to have separate threads for separate casts. I thought I'd let somebody else go first this time so I'll hold off on comments (unless no one posts until tomorrow night )

Shoe sound may depend on where one is sitting -- I wasn't aware of clattering from orchestra right front (but, then, it took me ten years to realize that the dancers in "Les Patineurs" "swished" over the "ice" because I always saw it from the Post's assigned seats, which are orchestra right front, so sometimes it does matter where you're sitting ) Marc, it's a very traditional production. Soft and pretty -- Giselle in pale blue, her "friends" (six of them) in raspberry-to-apricot. The peasant men are overdressed, IMO: they look like they all flunked out of Squire school or, as a friend of mine said, "this must be a very good harvest." Huge castle in the background (the sets are from the film "Dancers.") HUGE. Hard to imagine a Silesian Count living in it, but.... Giselle's Mother does the "you dance, you die" mime scene, the Albrechts, so far at least, have been of the sincerely in love variety. The hunting party is substantial -- and very well staged, I think. They mill around instead of standing and gawking, and there's the feel of a country fair. There are two hunting dogs, and two little boys on the wine keg (Lucia Chase would love it) I missed several chains in the ABT-Giselle production story, so others may be able to fill in here far better than I, but this basically looks, dramatically and mostly choreographically, like the old David Blair production (which was based on the 1960s Royal Ballet production which is supposedly based on the Stepanov Notebooks). Some of the corps dances in the first act are different -- the boys don't throw baskets of grapes at each other; darn -- and the peasant pas de deux is an amalgam. I think the adagio and first woman's solo were changed, by Baryshnikov, to be what he had known from the Kirov; the rest is the older version. Nobody's quite made it through peasant pas yet, but there have been some nice moments and they've two more performances to go.

I was also very glad to have seen this performance. It's the most satisfying evening at ABT that I've seen in a long time, and if anyone was there who's come to ballet in the past decade and is impatient with constant complaints that "ballet isn't what it used to be," well, last night was. The difference between this Giselle and the "is anyone minding the store?" performances of the first program are mindboggling. This was well staged, well directed, well coached. There were some mishaps (a shaky peasant pas de deux, quite possibly because of a last-minute replacement), a myrtle branch that wouldn't break (perhaps it, too, was in awe?), and there were times when I thought the corps was a bit rag-taggled, and certainly not the Kirov. But the outlines of the production are there and two very fine dancers got deluxe support from the whole company. (Meaning, it didn't look like stars had been parachuted in for the night.) Kent's acting in the mad scene was the finest I've ever seen (I go back only to 1976 in this ballet). One could quibble that it was too realistic for a romantic ballet, but taken on its own terms, this was real acting. Her dancing in the second act was beautifully light and, more important for me, beautifully detailed. Carreno was as close to perfect as one can get, and his Cuban-Soviet schooling showed in every movement. Gillian Murphy was Myrthe -- still a fledgling, but the dancing was beautiful. I do have one complaint. This is what ballet should look like, this is the level of professionalism ballet companies should be, in contemporary terms, "producing." Every night, not just on the odd Good Friday. p.s. It occurred to me that these first two posts don't leave very much room for disagreement, but please don't feel constrained if you DO disagree. The two men behind me laughed all the way through -- they obviously thought it very old-fashioned. My main point is that U thought the level of the performance was what it should be. My instincts are that the other three performances this weekend--Tuttle and Corella this afternoon, Jaffe and Stiefel tonight, and McKerrow and Belosertkovsky tomorrow afternoon--will be different, of course, but meet the same standard [ 04-14-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]