ARTS
Old favourites, new-style
Jann Parry
The Paris Opera Ballet, which has re- turned to London after 28 years, has proved itself over the past two weeks to be a wonderful dance machine. Its stars are serene and confident, its soloists sparkling, its corps disciplined. If the French had our ballet repertoire, they could conquer the world. Fortunately for our own develop- ment, the Opera company got itself into such bureaucratic and artistic tangles over past decades that it operated about as effec- tively as an Emmett machine: British ballet flourished meanwhile and built up its reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. The French have now started taking their national ballet company seriously again. A recent article by the choreographer Roland Petit went so far as to urge the President of the Republic to do something about the ungovernability of the Opera. Like the fam- ed French civil service, however, the dancers and their instructors have maintain- ed their high standards throughout the years of administrative chaos. Order of a sort seems to have been restored and the French are back on the offensive, deploying such Exocets as Patrick Dupond ,and Elisabeth Platel among a battery of for- midable dancers.
The company has brought two full-length ballets to London; John Neumeier's recent A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pierre Lacotte's La Sylphide, a recreation of the old Romantic ballet. La Sylphide, which opened the two-week season at Covent Garden, disappointed many British ballet critics and enthusiasts. Its main fault ap- pears to have been that it was not the ver- sion of the story with which we are familiar. Lacotte claims that his is a 'reconstruction' of the original ballet by Filippo Taglioni, which he created in 1832 for his daughter, Marie. Lacotte restaged it 140 years later for his wife, Ghislaine Thesmar. The alter- native version was made by August Bour- nonville in 1836 to show off his girlfriend, Lucile Grahn. The Danish Ballet has per- formed it ever since, making it the best- known version of the story.
The plot, such as it is, is the same in all the versions. James, a young Scotsman, is claimed on the eve of his marriage to Effie by the Sylphide of the title; she leads him into the woods, which are congested with sylphs and witches. Madge, the worst of the witches, misleads James into killing the Sylphide by destroying her wings. Effie, meanwhile, has married another. Evil, for once in an old ballet, triumphs. Judging by Lacotte's reconstruction, Taglioni pere seems to have been in no hurry to get on with the story. He digresses along the way into lengthy balletic essays in style and language, in the manner of a 19th-century novelist. Bournonville's tauter, more dramatic version is the equivalent of an adaptation of the story for television.
The original has a rich vocabulary of an- tique steps with beautiful, half-forgotten names; saut de l'ange, pas de cheval, glissade precipitee ... but in Lacotte's writing, the steps do not combine to make coherent statements. The fault, I suspect, lies with the method of recreation. Lacotte painstakingly researched the Paris Opera archives, including Marie Taglioni's notebooks and annotated scores, to get as close to the original as he could. The result lacks an authentic, individual voice: it is an historical pastiche, not a first-hand account of the ballet. What the production does have, though, is a coherent and convincing style. The Opera dancers, from stagiaires to etolles, understand the Romantic style from the inside. They never look as though they have taken up a pose as if for a photographer to catch them in the likeness of an old print. Both Sylphides in the Co- vent Garden casts, Ghislaine Thesmar and Elisabeth Platel, did echo the lithographs of Taglioni in the role; but they did not revert to looking like contemporary dancers in between the famous poses.
It was curious, in fact, how similar the two French ballerinas were in the role — the result, presumably, of the same careful coaching. Thesmar was the more mature Sylphide; light, delicate but womanly. Platel, at 23, is the youngest of the Opera's etoiles. Unfairly, she is endowed with great physical beauty as well as an immaculate technique. Like Thesmar and the other soloists (and how unlike our own dear Royal Ballet) she has precise, educated feet that display the old-fashioned steps of petite batterie to their full advantage. Where Thesmar skimmed the ground in her
'I'm no failure, I'm a happy and fulfilled shoe fetishist.' variations, Platel bounded effortlessly, her upper body serenely undisturbed by the fly-' ing feet beneath — just like the old lithographs. Platel has a natural coolness in her dancing, an aloofness that suits the Sylphide well. Sylphs, after all, do not have hearts, however much they may deceive mortals that they do. Therein lies the pro- blem for the second act of the ballet: there is a great deal of dancing for the Sylphide, James and the attendant sylphs; but unlike the second act of Giselle, which it greatly resembles, the dancing is not a metaphor for emotion. James and the Sylphide are not expressing undying love for each other; the sylphs are not a dramatic chorus to the action, but simply pretty additions to the forest decor. However charming the varia- tions, there is no possibility of surprise or development; and Taglioni/Lacotte does say everything three times to Bournonville's once.
A Midsummer Night's Dream brought out the strength, in depth, of the male members of the company. It is Shakes- peare's story, with the gloss of turning the fairy scenes into the dream of Hippolyta. Theseus becomes a strange, cruel Oberon and the court Master of the Revels turns out to be, of course, Puck. The roles were danc- ed magnificently by Jean-Yves Lormeau as Oberon and Patrick Dupond as Puck• Neumeier reverses expectations by making the fairies' world the cold, alienated one, populated by creatures from a space- fantasy. It is the humans who are the en- chanted beings at the bottom of the garden. for them, sex and love are still magic. What the fairies get up to I can only describe as 'practices'. Neumeier ensures that he has the best of both worlds by giving the modern-stylle choreography to the fairies. If you don I like the slither-and-grope contortions, then that could be because their domain is not a very pleasant one. As a fail-safe, there are the court scenes with neo-Romantic choreography for the same dancers in pret- ty Regency costumes. There is music for most tastes as well: Mendelssohn for the mortals, an electronic score by Ligeti for the fairies and barrel-organ tunes for the mechanicals. These last, a notorious!) tiresome lot, won round the reluctan. English audience till even the sight of the
barrel organ brought laughter. Yet the en counter between Titania (Noella Pontos and Bottom (Georges Piletta) was disturb
ing rather than entertaining; the sort 0 coupling that only Puck would find funtlY Puck himself is a brilliant creation, ow101 as much to the dancer (Dupond) as th' choreographer. He is Oberon's creature, t`
be abused at will, but pleased with his owl pliant body and infinitely curious abo u
everyone else's. He is so uncomprehendal, of mortals' behaviour that he cannot bell compounding the lovers' confusion. (Mat ters are further muddled by his adoption °I
myopic Helena's glasses; no wonder a' humans look alike to him.) The balle builds surely from the bewilderments in th wood to the climax in the wedding seen
with its triumphal march. By the final grand Pas de deux you sense that Neumeier is stretched to the outer limits of his resources as a dramatic choreographer. The dancers have been stretched as welt — but they have plenty of reserves left. And we have seen only the half, pf them. There is yet another Opera company back home in Paris.
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