Giselle at Sadler's Wells

Giselle at Sadler’s Wells

I am not a regular dance or ballet goer. Indeed the shows I’ve attended can be counted on the fingers of one hand (or perhaps that should be the points of one foot). So, in keeping with the spirit of these times, I’m proud to be a non-expert. Therefore it was with a very open mind (that is, a mind vacant both of pre-conceptions and any relevant knowledge of the dance)  that I attended Sadler’s Wells to see the much acclaimed English National Ballet production of Giselle, guest of a family member who is an aficionado and amateur dancer.

I did some homework. I learned that Giselle was a mid-C19 creation, a child of the Gothic-Romantic tradition of the time. Its plot (I struggle with the idea of plot  in relation to dance) is both romantic and gruesome. In a peasant village, Giselle is wooed by another villager, Hilarion. But along comes Albrecht, a Prince in disguise, who falls in love with G. A tug d’amour follows, including a fight, ended when an aristocratic hunting party arrives. Among its number is the existing fiancée of Albrecht.

Albrecht’s cover, and his two-timing, is blown. Giselle dies of a broken heart.

So far, so much romantic tragedy.

Things get darker in the Second Act. There’s a ghostly band of female spirits abroad – the Willis- close cousins to the Furies of Greek Myth. These creatures are the revenants of wronged women, who take revenge on wronging men.

The leader of the Willis conjures up Gisele’s spirit, and she is inducted into the band. They go after Hilarion for being a brute, and do him to death. Then they go after Albrecht, but he and G (still a ghost) find love again. Her love protects A from the Willis, and his breaks the enchantment that has raised her spirit, and she returns to the quiet of the grave.

This story is all rendered by dance, music, lighting and scenery. Necessarily the narrative has to be simplified and signalled expressively. A crowd of people and a woman; two men circling her and each other; a dramatic and fatal intrusion; hellish creatures; death; triumph of love (sort of).

Obviously costumes and scenery do much to “locate” the action somewhere (or nowhere). But it was puzzling to read in the Programme notes that the production places the action in a refugee or migrant camp or sweatshop of “Outcasts”, with scenery of a massive back wall dividing them from a better world. The aristocratic hunting pary are now “landlords” (of the place) – and Albrecht’s status is unexplained, although he still betrothed to one of the landlords’ party.

This novel contextual elaboration adds very little. The Ballet, as I have suggested above, deals with archetypical romantic themes in the First Act, and it doesn’t really add much to “dress” it up in modern political clothes- unlike, say, a Shakespeare play where adjusting the context can have illuminating results.

Further, the Second Act is a thoroughgoing Gothic fantasy. Directing our attention towards some vague political slant in the First Act just doesn’t carry over.

Complaints about the framing of the production notwithstanding, I was mesmerised by the dancing. It seemed to me (inexpert though I am) a wonderful marriage of contemporary dance choreography with classical ballet techniques (the tip-toe stuff, the leaping stuff..).

At times the ensemble seemed to be engaged in a demented but perfect Pilates class (I now know why ex dancers become Pilates teachers), with breathtakingly supple “core” routines. Once the Company hopped across the stage on one leg, the other fully extended. The shapes called to mind the flight of a herd of smaller dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

There was a riveting scene when the villagers/Outcasts gather round the dying Giselle in a circular scrum of interlocked bodies, swaying and pullulating in a Mexican Wave effect. I thought of a carnivorous plant ingesting a trapped insect. The Financial Times review goes for an entirely different, and more vivid simile: the scene brought to mind “Busby Berkeley’s floral sphincters”…

I’ve not visited Sadler’s Wells for a Matinee performance before. Its glass atrium is very light – but the public spaces heat up in sunshine as people crowd in. I was struck by the significantly good postures of most of the audience as we waited (compare the stoops sported by many opera-goers). Perhaps many in the audience were dancers themselves, or ex dancers.

It made me straighten up, for a while.

Sept 2017