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Giannandre a Poesio
Giselle Royal Opera House
O13 January, Sadler's Wells Theatre V./hosted the annual Critic's Circle National Dance Awards. The number of prestigious dance-related accolades in this country is practically nil, unlike that of other performing arts.
Thanks to clockwork organisation, to be credited to Mike Dixon, chairman of the Critic's Circle, and to other dance critics such as Debra Craine, Jeffery Taylor, Freda Pitt, Bruce Marriott and Margaret Willis, this year's ceremony was a very interesting event. Well-deserved awards were bestowed on a predominantly starry roster of recipients, selected from different strands of the profession. I was particularly happy to see that the award for best classical choreography, which went to Michael Corder for his acclaimed Melody on the Move, was presented by Sir Peter Wright. I am a fond admirer of Sir Peter, a man who, in my opinion, has contributed greatly to both the development and the popularisation of ballet in the United Kingdom. Aptly, the awards ceremony took place the morning after the opening night of the Royal Ballet's new run of his winning staging of Giselle.
There are countless versions of this immortal ballet, regarded by many as the epitome of what we still perceive today as Romantic choreography — even though what we now see has little or nothing to do
with the original 1841 text. Some productions strive to evoke or recreate the longlost qualities of a choreography that, due to a number of changes and interpolations, has survived as a splendid historical hybrid; others focus on the ballet's vibrant narrative themes. Few, however, succeed in combining the recreation of the Romantic genre with an accessible rendition of the original drama, Peter Wright's version for the Royal Ballet is, in my view, the one in which such fusion happens more successfully than anywhere else.
Without indulging in an absurd preservation of obsolete formulae, but never too far from a respectful reading of what (despite many revisions) has survived as the ballet's standard text, Wright's production for the Royal Ballet possesses timeless theatrical freshness and a sense of historical correctness. Indeed, much of the unhindered flow of the drama that characterises this version stems from an attentive reading of the original libretto as well as from well thought-out structural choices. Unlike other productions, in which the scene sequence closely follows the dramatic and choreographic structure proposed in 1910 by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris — allegedly the first production of the ballet in the West after a long period of neglect — in Wright's reading the first act presents a gentle reshuffling of the available material. This enhances the narrative build-up. By reinstating a long-lost mime passage, performed by the eponymous heroine's mother, Wright has rebalanced the drama, for that often omitted mime passage introduces the narrative themes of the second act, thus bestowing seamless continuity on the whole work.
Even the more debatable translation of the original 'peasant pas de deux' into a pas de six (including a splendid variation by Frederick Ashton) works marvellously within Wright's reading. As for the second act, beautifully set in a truly dark forest designed by John Macfarlane, Wright has opted to leave the text as it is, as if to underline the untouchable preciousness of the surviving choreography.
This production stands out also for the numerous interpretative possibilities it offers to the various performers. Unlike those versions in which a much-idealised authenticity impinges on the artists' freedom, this Giselle is truly a text that blossoms in the hands of talented interpreters, namely in the hands of artists who are skilled enough to absorb the subtle nuances of the production. On the opening night, Alina Cojocaru was a Giselle to remember. I have written extensively on the way this young, exceptional artist portrays this difficult role, which is said to be to ballet what Hamlet is to drama. Yet Cojocaru is not a dancer who likes to indulge in trite clichés or repetitive formulae. And she managed to surprise me once again. There could not have been a better performance to start the new year.
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