English National Ballet: Giselle

London Coliseum
January 15, 2024

The happy grins and overheard comments during the interval told you all you needed to know. Mary Skeaping’s Giselle is wonderful, a real gem in the English National Ballet repertoire.

Giselle is the oldest ballet in the canon that has been in continuous production, but no one involved in the original 1841 production would recognise any of the contemporary performances as being close to their own. There is a myth that ballets are only perpetuated through, word of mouth, with dancers passing on their knowledge through the generations.

Erina Takahashi as Giselle
and Francesco-Gabriele Frola as Albrecht
Photo ASH

As Giselle has remained popular, it is possibly less dependent on notation, but nevertheless, the written record is essential to support custom and practice. Mary Skeaping knew the worth of both. Perhaps one of her most valuable contributions was in restoring Adam’s full score (how rare to hear the Wilis’ fugue for instance), albeit with the familiar 19th-century interpolations.

Francesco-Gabriele Frola is an admirable, youthful, very convincing Albrecht/Loys. He has ballon in spades but never lets that detract from neat landings.

Erina Takahashi, deservedly a leading dancer at English National Ballet for some time now, certainly has the maturity to create a convincing Giselle. Skeaping has restored some of her original character attributes, thus rescuing her from the somewhat fey interpretations that have become current in recent decades.

Loys and Giselle are able to forge a much fuller relationship than is usually allowed for because of the inclusion of mime. He teases her with kissing noises as he hides behind her cottage and they ‘converse.’ The mime reveals a vital plot point: Giselle is no fool and will not dally with Loys until she gets his assurance of serious intent. She is not content with a mere promise but uses the folklore of the flower, which of course, does not betray her, even as she wilfully ignores it. It is her own desire to overlook her own culture and accept the deception of the discarded petal that leads to her downfall and makes her shame much more understandable. She has betrayed herself and her community as much as been betrayed.

Similarly, Fabian Reimair is facilitated in his depiction of Hilarion by the detail of the mime. He is frequently played in black and white terms as the villain of the piece or the Cassandra. Here he is neither, rather instead a flawed individual, both being in the right in unmasking Albrecht but in the wrong in pressing his suit with Giselle in the face of opposition. He also serves as a foil to the Wilis in that his death is clearly unjust, thus underlying the (misogynistic) premise of the femmes fatales. We again see the ‘conversation’ within the love triangle which gives it depth and meaning.

English National Ballet in Mary Skeaping’s Giselle
Photo ASH

Ivana Bueno was an impressive soloist in the peasant pas de deux, but was not quite so well supported by Noam Durand who seemed to struggle with the tempo and batterie. The corps were admirably disciplined.

Precious Adams was underwhelming as Myrtha, however. She seemed to dance with all the stops in, seemingly nervous, her characterisation topped by a fixed, near-sullen stare. Finding that her rosemary branch had lost its power merely elicited a peeved pout. The role of Myrtha demands a strong actor/dancer with stage presence. Here Adams executed the steps but with none of the necessary feeling. That left Albrecht or Giselle with little to work off, so that the battle of the final triangle of characters lost a lot of its dramatic potential and struggled to mirror the love triangle in Act I.

Precious Adams as Myrtha in Mary Skeaping’s Giselle
Photo ASH

Modern audiences would no doubt find the original production somewhat risible with its mechanically flying Wilis and extensive mime. Indeed, there were a few sniggers as Giselle was carried across the back of the stage by a not-so-invisible partner and when her veil was whipped off into the wings. Ballets do need to change in order to remain relevant. However, what Mary Skeaping has done is restored some of the detail of the original, not least the score and mime (clearly well taught), thereby putting the heart and meaning back into the work.

In the pit, while there may have been a little flatness in the woodwinds at times, the English National Ballet Philharmonic under the baton of Gavin Sutherland was mostly on top form. There was great subtlety in the use of varying tempi and dynamics were superbly executed, with much detail in the sublime score being made apparent.

All told, a not-to-be-missed production that artsitic director Aaron S. Watkin has very sensibly decided to provide with another outing.