Giselle. Paris Opera Ballet (2013)

29 January 2013, Capitol Theatre, Sydney

The Paris Opera Ballet’s production of Giselle is breathtaking, poetic and immensely moving. It is steeped in the two nineteenth century traditions from which it emerged: ballet-pantomime and romanticism. And it is danced by artists whose technical expertise is a benchmark for today.

The production is so clear in its story-telling. The dancers appear to live rather than act out their parts and the evening just sweeps along. Giselle, danced by Dorothée Gilbert, draws us into her peasant world and shares her inconsolable sorrow at being betrayed in Act I, and in Act II she almost seems to melt away at times so fragile and vaporous is her reading of her role as a Wili. Her mimed tears as she tells us how much she had loved Albrecht simply melt the heart.

But, while it is clear, the production is also subtle, beautifully so. Nothing screams out, everything is harmonious as the story moves to an inevitable conclusion.

As for the dancing, well there’s just nothing like the Paris Opera Ballet. The corps de ballet is so beautifully rehearsed and they danced to perfection in both acts; Mathieu Ganio as Albrecht performed the most exquisite series of entrechats in Act II; Marie-Agnès Gillot was a commanding Myrthe and the Act I Peasant pas de deux, danced by Mélanie Hurel and Emmanuel Thibault, was joyously captivating.

But although there were some (or many) outstanding moments of performance, the evening was about the entire company. What makes this company so outstanding is the way in which the dancers perform in the classical mode. Every movement is a complete one. The dancers are able to take a bend of the body, a circular movement, a lift of the arms, anything really, and one can see where the movements starts, how it moves along its trajectory and how it finishes and moves into the next movement. This kind of dancing, so smooth and fluid, so sweeping, having such clarity, is rare and it is such a huge pleasure to see.

The Sydney Lyric Orchestra, consisting of musicians drawn together from a variety of organisations and directed by concertmaster Adrian Keating, was conducted by Belgian, Koen Kessels. The music never intrudes but is always clearly and strongly present, moving the story along. Perfect. It also presents a new perspective on Adolphe Adam’s music, reinstating some of the passages that have long been removed from the score as a result of the ballet having been whittled away over the decades from its original ballet-pantomime intentions. And the cello solo in Act II was as moving as the dance it accompanied.

Much has been made of this production being the ‘most authentic’ production of Giselle, and I began this review by mentioning the two traditions from which the first Giselle emerged. It is true that the ballet-pantomime tradition has been given a focus to a certain extent with the mime scenes, such as Giselle’s mother Berthe, danced by Amélie Lamoureux, telling in an extended way the story of the Wilis and prophesying the death of Giselle; the insertion of the men playing dice in the forest as Act II begins; and so on. The romanticism is well and truly there in the qualities the Paris Opera Ballet brings to Act II—that feeling, explored through technical means as much as anything else, of the Wilis drifting in and out of a real world and a world beyond the real.

But I have seen both these traditions explored in several other productions of Giselle—that of Sylvie Guillem for the Finnish National Ballet, the Royal Ballet’s production where the Act I mime is extensive, and even parts of Peggy van Praagh’s production for the Australian Ballet. So for me it is not so much a ‘return to authenticity’ that marks this production as remarkable, as interesting as this is. It is the skill and beauty of the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, who are transcendent artists, and the direction of the company that understands that the classical technique can accomplish so much when exploited to its limits and used as an expressive vocabulary.

As a side issue, I admired the program cover for Giselle, reproduced below.

It captures so much of the essence of Act II, the fragility of the world of the Wili and the overwhelming presence of the forces of nature and the night. And, best of all, it isn’t a fashion shot that has nothing to do with what happens in the ballet. The cover photo is by © Jacques Moatti.

Michelle Potter, 30 January 2013

Update (3 February 2013): I have it on reliable authority that the sublime cello solo was, on opening night, played by Peter Morrison.

Some thoughts on Giselle and the Paris Opera Ballet

Interesting news from Paris is that Benjamin Millepied will take up the position of Director of Dance at the Paris Opera Ballet following the retirement of Brigitte Lefèvre in 2014. Millepied, dancer and choreographer whose performing career has included a significant stretch of time with New York City Ballet where he rose from corps dancer to principal, is perhaps best known to a wider public for his work with Natalie Portman on the movie Black Swan. Millepied’s stage choreography was most recently seen in the southern hemisphere in 2012 in the Royal New Zealand Ballet season of NYC. RNZB staged Millepied’s 2005 work 28 variations on a theme by Paganini.

Meanwhile, the Paris Opera Ballet, a company with a long and illustrious heritage, opens its Sydney season of Giselle at the Capitol Theatre tomorrow. It has been a while since a full production of Giselle has been danced in Australia, and this is a perfect opportunity to see it performed by the company whose forebears danced it at its world premiere.

Giselle first took to the stage in Paris in 1841 at the theatre of the Paris Opera. The ballet was developed by a first-rate team of European creatives. Its libretto was written by poet and critic Théophile Gautier and dramatist Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and was based on a story by the German writer Heinrich Heine. Its music was composed by Adolphe Adam and its choreography created by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. On opening night the role of Giselle was danced by Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi and her performance that night established her as a major star.

Since that opening performance Giselle has hardly been out of the ballet repertoire making it one of the most enduring of all the classics. It has undergone various changes over time, as happens with all works in the performing arts, but essentially it remains the story of a young peasant girl, Giselle, who falls for Albrecht, a nobleman in disguise. She has her heart broken and dies when it becomes clear that Albrecht is engaged to a noblewoman, Bathilde. Giselle returns in spirit form—as a Wili, that is a spirit of a betrothed girl who has died before her wedding night. Led by their queen, Myrthe, the Wilis are intent on pursuing to their death all men who enter the forest at night. It falls to Giselle to save a grieving Albrecht from this fate.

But like all works of art that have endured over centuries, Giselle takes place in a complex world. We encounter many differences of life-style—peasants appear alongside noblemen; and different realms of nature—a fertile countryside where a bountiful grape harvest is celebrated in Act I contrasts with a forest graveyard and the chill of night in Act II. In the Paris Opera Ballet production flower symbolism also plays a significant role. White flowers appear in both acts. They are daisies and field flowers in Act I. Giselle’s peasant admirer, the gamekeeper Hilarion, leaves a bouquet of white daisies outside Giselle’s cottage rather than the dead rabbit or bird he leaves in productions by many other companies. A single daisy also hints that all is not well when Giselle and Albrecht engage in the ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ game with daisy petals.

In Act II Hilarion returns with daisies for Giselle’s grave but the flowers of Act II include lilies, white roses and flowering myrtle, powerful symbols of love, immortality, purity, and in the case of myrtle used for centuries in bridal bouquets. The Queen of the Wilis, Myrthe, carries a branch of flowering myrtle as her sceptre; Albrecht enters with an armful of lilies for Giselle’s grave; Giselle pleads with Myrthe to spare Albrecht and a handful of white roses tumble from her arms and fall at Myrthe’s feet. The forces of nature are powerful throughout.

Giselle also presents us with a number of conundrums. Where or who is Giselle’s father for example? We only meet her mother, Berthe, who in Act I superstitiously tells the story of the Wilis and provides a foretaste of what will occur in Act II. Could the father be the Duke of Courland, who in Act I arrives with his hunting party and is served with refreshments by Berthe? In the Paris Opera Ballet production (at least on its current video manifestation) he takes a particular interest in Giselle, cupping her chin in his hands and looking into her eyes. He seems quite familiar with Berthe as well. And why did Giselle die? Was it of a broken heart? Was it from all the dancing in which we see her engage in Act I, just as Berthe prophesied? Or did she inherit a weak constitution? And how does she die? Does she stab herself with Albrecht’s sword, which Hilarion uses to expose Albrecht’s real identity? And what of Albrecht? Does he really love Giselle? Or is he living a lie and wreaking havoc on the life of a young peasant girl as he plays at being a peasant himself? Marie-Antoinette and her fake rustic village at Versailles come to mind.

The dancing itself in this Paris Opera Ballet production is almost flawless in a technical sense. In addition, the dancers, male and female, have an elegance and a perfection in the way they carry themselves that not only reflects their impeccable training but somehow also seems to reflect their royal heritage. The Paris Opera Ballet can trace its lineage back to 1661, when the French monarch Louis XIV, the Sun King, established the Académie royale de danse. Louis XIV was an enthusiastic and accomplished dancer himself. His familiar name, the Sun King, is reputed to date from his appearance as Apollo, god of the sun, in one of the sequences in Les Ballets de la nuit in 1653. He was just 14 at the time and was dressed in a costume replete with golden rays that fanned out around him as we imagine the rays of the sun radiate from a golden orb. Legend also has it that he had such slim and elegant ankles that he loved to pose with his heel pushed forward to show the royal ankles in all their glory. Ballet technique, the story goes, has been characterised by a ‘turn out’ of the feet and legs ever since.

There is so much to ponder on as the story of Giselle unfolds. I am filled with anticipation!

Giselle, Paris Opera Ballet, Capitol Theatre, Sydney, January 29–February 9

© Michelle Potter, 28 January 2013

Postscript (29 January 2013): Shame about the misspelling of Laurent Hilaire’s name in The Sydney Morning Herald‘s article (p. 7) this morning. Not a good advertisement for Australian media on the morning of the Paris Opera Ballet’s opening. And, although the same article also notes that Millepied has no official ties with the Paris company, Millepied has made a work for the company, his Amoveo (2006).

Ballets Russes. The National Library’s finding aid

I was interested, but also filled with despair, to see that the National Library has updated another of its important online dance resources—the finding aid to the Ballets Russes programs for the three Australian tours by Colonel de Basil’s companies. I was interested because the original finding aid needed an update. Since the text was prepared some 10 years or so ago by Australian Collections’ librarian Richard Stone, new information has been unearthed, especially in relation to the dancers who toured with the company. This new material clearly needed to be added. I was also filled with despair, however, because it seems that once again an update to an existing dance resource now offers less than what was offered in the original version.

The original finding aid contained Stone’s text and digitised images of the entire National Library collection of programs and cast sheets for all three tours, along with some interesting advertising flyers for the tours. This digitisation project was carried out in 2005 with funding from the Australian Research Council as part of the Ballets Russes project. Some gaps existed where the Library did not hold programs or cast sheets, but the gaps were small as the Library’s holdings of de Basil company programs are extensive. Now in this update just a tiny portion of that material is being made accessible to the public as an online resource. I am at a loss to know why and wonder whether the Library intends to go back and attach the rest of the digitised material to the new finding aid? The full digitised material was an amazing resource making it possible to discover with ease who danced what and when, anywhere and at any time.

The updated finding aid also includes additional material that may cause confusion. An attempt is made to document the performances after the Original Ballet Russe left Australia in 1940 using a small collection of material from the Papers of Valrene Tweedie, also part of the National Library’s dance resources. While it is only to be expected that this documentation is, at this stage, far from complete, the problem is that many of Tweedie’s programs are not for performances by the Original Ballet Russe. The later part of the tour listings in the finding aid are for the company led by Sergei Denham, usually known as the One and Only Ballet Russe, which Tweedie joined in 1946, and for Cuban companies with which Tweedie was involved. The listing from 1940 onwards is really a reflection of the career of Valrene Tweedie rather than of the history of the Original Ballet Russe. This is not made clear in the updated finding aid. And incidentally, Valrene Tweedie was not the only Australian-born dancer to appear with the Original Ballet Russe in the United States and Cuba, as the text states. Melbourne-born Lydia Kuprina (Couprina) (Phillida Cooper) danced with the Original Ballet Russe in Australia in 1940 and also in the United States and Cuba at least until 1942.

It is unfortunate that the National Library’s dance material continues to be updated in a way that compromises that material. Let’s hope that at least the entire collection of digitised programs will eventually find its way into the updated finding aid.

Michelle Potter, 21 January 2013

Ballet and Fashion. National Gallery of Victoria

Ballet and fashion, an exhibition curated by Roger Leong as a joint venture between the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Ballet, is a mini-feast for the eyes. It is a small exhibition with just twenty-one costumes, several headdresses, a face-mask, and seven designs on paper. But the material gives an enticing glimpse of how designers whose work has been primarily in the field of fashion have collaborated in the production of dance.

**Akira ISOGAWA** (designer): **left**, *Dress (*2005) for *Grand*, choreographed by Graeme Murphy, Sydney Dance Company, 2005. Arts Centre Melbourne, Performing Arts. Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; **right**, Kevin Jackson in costume for Romeo (2011), *Romeo & Juliet*, choreographed by Graeme Murphy, The Australian Ballet, 2011. The Australian Ballet Collection, Melbourne. Photos: © Georges Antoni

The show is complemented by a compilation of footage showing extracts from five works: Romeo and Juliet (Graeme Murphy), 2 Lips and Dancers in Space (Robert Wilson/Makram Hamdam), Divergence (Stanton Welch), Aviary (Phillip Adams) and Tutu Parade (Adrian Burnett). The latter was part of another ‘tutu initiative’ that culminated in Tutu: designing for dance, an exhibition shown at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria in 2004–2005. The footage is an excellent addition giving the viewer the opportunity to see how (or if) some of the costumes we see in display cases move (or don’t) with the body. It is good quality footage too and shown on a large screen.

The exquisite, detailed work of Akira Isogawa is represented in the first room with three costumes from Graeme Murphy’s Romeo and Juliet. But the surprise is the inclusion of two dresses from Grand, Murphy’s deeply moving work made in 2005 in memory of his mother. The dresses from Grand are beautiful to look at close-up, which of course we don’t get the opportunity to do when we see them onstage. Delicate, intricately decorated, ruched and layered, gently coloured and made from ivory-coloured fabric, with one of them showing touches of gold decoration, they highlight the detail and care Isogawa puts into his work.

Another of Isogawa’s techniques that is hardly noticeable from the auditorium but that is a delight to see close-up is his use of delicately patterned fabric. The skirt of Lady Capulet’s dress for Act I scene iii in Romeo and Juliet, for example, has an overlay patterned with a feather design. Romeo’s tights are also patterned. And it is interesting to see close-up Isogawa’s use of Japanese techniques of manipulating fabric on the sleeves of Lady Capulet’s shrug and Romeo’s doublet. And I must admit I didn’t notice while watching the work onstage that Romeo carried a built-in pistol on his chest.

I was also taken by two black ‘bird’ costumes: Giles Deacon’s black tutu commissioned in 2010 by Harper’s Bazaar on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of English National Ballet, and a costume from Act I of Aviary a recent work by Phillip Adams. The Deacon tutu, with its traditional shape and with small clumps of ostrich feathers placed delicately on the outer rim of the skirt, has a bodice of skin-coloured fabric on which is stitched a heart-shaped front of lace and beads. While it was initially made as a kind of pièce d’occasion, it was worn in a performance of the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake by dancers of English National Ballet. It is a beautifully elegant version of the traditional tutu and its style stands in contrast to the modern variation on the tutu made by Toni Maticevski for Aviary. The Maticevski garment is less traditional in shape, rather more cabaret-esque with its pannier-like sides of strikingly large ostrich feathers, and with tulle and silk georgette fabric draped at front and back. Its accompanying millinery by Richard Nylon is eye-catching to say the least.

Remarkable to look at are three costumes by Viktor & Rolf for a Netherlands Dance Theatre production, 2 Lips and Dancers in Space, directed by Robert Wilson for the NDT III arm of the company. I especially enjoyed a black and gold costume that consisted of various extravagant additions to a basic, long-sleeved, black unitard-style garment. Gold metal crowns projected from the thigh and hip sections of the unitard, and gold cones (dunce caps?) with gold fabric falling from the peak of the cone sat on the shoulders and projected from the genital region. Gold fabric of various kinds—lamé, silk, satin—were wrapped and draped on various parts of the costume. The theatricality of the whole had the look of the Baroque era or perhaps Carnivale in Venice. Or perhaps Dada-esqe is a better word to describe the items, especially when one watches an extract from the work in the compilation of footage.

While I have singled out just a few of the costumes on display, every one of them has something of interest, either intrinsically, comparatively or in relation to the footage. Some are well-known to dance-goers in Australia: Vanessa Leyonhjelm’s ‘industrial’ tutu for Stanton Welch’s Divergence, Collette Dinnigan’s finely designed tutu with black lace and beading over a peach-coloured silk skirt and Easton Pearson’s African-inspired tutu, the latter two having been seen in the earlier tutu exhibition. Others are not so well-known: Rei Kawakubo’s astonishing costumes with their large protuberances for Merce Cunningham’s Scenario, Christian Lacroix’s colourful, multi-patterned, mixed fabric costumes for a 1980s revival of Gaîté parisienne by American Ballet Theatre, and others by Ralph Rucci and Valentino. And then of course there are the astonishing hooped burqas with flashing blue lights that are part of 2 Lips and Dancers in Space.

**Christian LACROIX** (designer): Costume for the Lead Can Can Dancer (1988), *Gâité Parisienne*, choreographed by Léonide Massine, staged by Lorca Massine, American Ballet Theatre, 1988. Costume worn by Robyn Hendricks. American Ballet Theatre Collection, New York. Photo: Jo Duck, makeup courtesy Napoleon Perdis. © Christian Lacroix

The exhibition is a very nicely curated show and well worth seeing. It is accompanied by a useful booklet, Ballet and fashion, by Roger Leong, which contains the information on the wall captions and extra information, especially about the designers. Some seating in the gallery displaying the footage would be a bonus.

Ballet and fashion: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 3 November 2012–19 May 2013

Michelle Potter, 17 January 2013

The Merce app

David Vaughan’s Merce Cunningham. Fifty Years was published in New York by Aperture in 1997. It was described on the title page as a ‘chronicle and commentary’, which it is, containing as it does a chronological account of Cunningham’s career from its beginnings until 1994. In 2012, Aperture and the Cunningham Dance Foundation released an updated version of the book for iPad. The app contains the material in the original book and continues Vaughan’s chronicle and commentary in the same kind of format. It takes the reader from 1994 until Cunningham’s death in 2009 and on a little further until the end of the Legacy Tour in 2011.

Screenshot from *Merce Cunningham: 65 years* (Aperture and Cunningham Dance Foundation, 2012). Designer Didier Garcia, Developer Larson Associates

But of course as an app Merce Cunningham: 65 years is able to offer a range of enticing audio-visual items. They include extracts from a number of Cunningham dances, including some black and white archival material and some extracts from documentaries; excerpts from a series of filmed interviews with Cunningham conducted by David Vaughan; excerpts from a filmed series called Mondays with Merce, in which Cunningham recalls anecdotes and events from the past; and something I really enjoyed, Cunningham reading his seminal essay of 1952, Space, time and dance.

Sadly, but for good reasons no doubt, the moving image excerpts are all too brief. One of the most interesting items, however, is an excerpt, only recently discovered, from Martha Graham’s 1940 work Every soul is a circus featuring Cunningham, Graham and Eric Hawkins. Cunningham, then not much more than twenty, enters and dances a short solo. He jumps and prances, changes direction suddenly, sinks to the floor. He is as light as a feather and moves like quicksilver. It’s a remarkable view of Cunningham the young dancer.

*Nearly Ninety*, 2009. Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House, 16 April 2009. From *Merce Cunningham: 65 years* (Aperture and Cunningham Dance Foundation, 2012). Photo © Stephanie Berger

The photographs in this app are breathtaking. I was especially moved by some of the more recent ones, with which I am not so familiar. What they dois show fabulously trained, articulate bodies. Reading Cunningham’s essays reproduced in this app, listening to him in interviews and reading his thoughts throughout, all his beliefs about dancing are there to see on the bodies of his dancers. Similarly, looking at the short extracts of film footage, the same understanding of how the body positions itself and moves in time and space is absolutely apparent. Look, for example, at Cédric Andrieux in an extract from Suite for five or Holley Farmer in Loose time.

There are also some fabulous photographs from the Beacon Events series, taken during residencies at Dia: Beacon, a gallery space in Beacon a small city not far from Manhattan where Cunningham choreographed a series of site-specific events responding to the art on display.

*Beacon Events*, 2007-2009. Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, NY. From *Merce Cunningham: 65 years* (Aperture and Cunningham Dance Foundation, 2012). Photo © Stephanie Berger

In addition, this app has a wonderful bibliography (expanded from the original book); a list of works; an extensive gallery of images; a small gallery of Cunningham’s drawings; another small gallery of pages from his journals; and several of Cunningham’s essays of which the 1994 How to cook a macrobiotic meal in a hotel room is an absolute delight. The app is also a remarkable record of how Cunningham never stopped investigating the new, and never stopped collaborating with others who also worked to discover new ways of making art, right up until the end.

I had some minor issues when I first starting using this app with navigation, which sometimes is a right to left swipe and sometimes an upwards movement. But that was soon over and the navigation is quite logical given that the app is quite large. The audio-visual material is embedded in the app so once downloaded no active internet connection is required. Merce Cunningham: 65 years is a remarkable initiative. It is available through the iTunes store, is available for iPad only and is worth every cent of the $15 or so that it costs.

All images reproduced with permission and courtesy of Aperture.

Michelle Potter, 13 January 2013

UPDATE AUGUST 2020: Unfortunately the app has not been updated so that it can be used with today’s technology. This is a shame because the audio visual content was just wonderful,