It was only three years ago that the Princeton- and New Brunswick-based American Repertory Ballet mounted a new production of the revered 19th-century story ballet “Giselle” (reviewed in this publication Feb. 19, 2020). So, when ARB announced its presentation of another new Giselle, March 3 through 5 at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, I questioned the company’s need to so-immediately revisit this Romantic-Era tale.
We all know the story of the innocent peasant girl, Giselle, deceived by the masquerading Count Albrecht. Driven into madness, a heart-broken Giselle dies, but her ghost returns and rescues Albrecht from the Wilis — those vengeful spirits of betrayed females who inhabit the nighttime forest and trap men into dancing to death. Yet with its fraught depictions of class, gender, identity, body, and power relationships, I could imagine the appeal of radically re-working this ballet to speak to contemporary concerns. But alas, ARB’s latest “Giselle” simply modifies rather than re-invents the classic work.
Premiered by Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2012, this “Giselle” is co-choreographed (after Marius Petipa) by ARB artistic director Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg, former principal dancer with Britain’s Royal Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. Re-staged and partially re-designed for ARB, the production, for the most part, looks very much like “Giselle” always has — albeit somewhat spiffier, thanks to Howard C. Jones’s crafty scenic design, Joseph R. Walls’s gorgeous lighting, Julian Kelley’s intriguing projections, and the spirited skirts of Natalia Stewart’s costumes, which flit about in delightful amplification of the dancers’ jumps and spins. And its modifications, while subtle, are smartly conceived and make for an entertaining and widely-accessible ballet-going experience.
To start, Stiefel and Kobborg toyed with the familiar choreographic “building blocks” of the ballet’s first act. Not only did they enliven the action by adding more group dances, performed with polish and gusto by the ARB ensemble, but they also beefed up the dance duties of a secondary male character, serving up exciting athletic moves. Most notably, they chopped up the choreography into alternating snippets of “this and that” in a way sure to suit the truncated attention spans of 21st-century audiences. Instead of watching the full pas de deux as traditionally performed by a peasant couple in Act 1, here we see the duo dancing short sections of it interspersed amid solos by other characters and ensemble passages.
And to make the ballet’s narrative register more clearly to contemporary audiences, the choreographers replaced much of the mime — those fusty coded gestures that convey the story in old ballets —with naturalistic gestures and authentic expressions of emotion. The trade-off is that the interesting lines and dynamics of the stylized mimetic movements are lost while, instead, we watch two guys standing side by side nodding their heads, shrugging, and casually lifting a palms-up forearm. Other times, however, brilliant use is made of stillness as the dancers stop moving, yet continue feeling, causing us to listen more attentively to the music and to appreciate how richly “Giselle’s” story is told via its motif-driven Adolphe Adam score.
While little else is altered plot-wise, Stiefel and Kobborg make an important, culturally relevant modification by book-ending their “Giselle” with a Prologue and Epilogue. The short scenes not only conjure poetic, other-worldliness that effectively transports us into the realm of Romanticism, but they reveal an aged Albrecht plagued by his misdeeds, finally — and with much remorse — returning to the forest of the Wilis to face his punishment. A respectful nod, perhaps, to today’s #MeToo Movement and evolving notions of accountability.
At the matinee performance I attended on March 4, Nanako Yamamoto shone in the title role. With her effortless technique and thoroughly convincing acting, she proved riveting throughout. As Albrecht, Andrea Marini partnered her admirably. Their overhead lifts were magnificent, but in their solo sequences, when the male’s gigantic leaps typically elicit the greater thrills, here Yamamoto out-dazzled at every turn. Kudos also to the Wilis — for the flawless unison of their ensemble dancing.
American Repertory Ballet next appears at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center June 10 and 11 in “Premiere3,” featuring choreography by Amy Seiwert, Ethan Stiefel, and Dance Theatre of Harlem co-founder Arthur Mitchell. www.arballet.org.
