by Leigh Witchel
American Repertory Ballet’s production of “Giselle” was like the old Avis slogan: We Try Harder. And in ballet, trying harder is a beautiful thing.
This version, co-credited to Artistic Director Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg, was done originally in 2012 for Royal New Zealand Ballet, but adapted and in some areas redesigned. Having seen Kobborg’s setting of “La Sylphide” at the Royal Ballet in 2005, there were moments that related enough in detail or intent that they seemed to be from his hand.
One that wasn’t familiar: the production added a framing element: an older Albrecht remembering the story. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds; Albrecht’s life after Giselle has always been an interesting, open question. The set, designed by Howard C. Jones, was largely what we know, but the stage of the NBPAC is small, so a single-level house for Giselle and Berthe on one side, a shed for Albrecht on the other.
The scaling down in the design fit the stage better but also gave the world Giselle lived in an almost embarrassing homespun quality that worked to set up a contrast between the peasants and the nobles. The bench Giselle and Albrecht sit on was barely large enough for two. When the Duke asked for refreshments for himself and his daughter, the table was a small box again barely large enough for the pitcher; the stools were too low. The tension felt like a hint of Kobborg’s Danishness, coming from a country that has a monarchy, but also much less awe of nobility.
This libretto didn’t depart wildly from the standard story, at least early on. Like Alexei Ratmansky, Kobborg is a skilled and thoughtful tailor when staging 19th century repertory, having the talent to make minor alterations without damaging the fabric. In their first scene, Albrecht tried to get Giselle to stay by asking if she would dance for him. You can argue the details (and there will be a few of those to come), but that’s the quibbling of people who believe in the story. This production does as well.
Andrea Marini entered as Albrecht, holding a hunting horn. Wilfred followed him. Stagings such as Akram Khan’s that remove the supporting characters are the best argument for why they are so important. Wilfred is a complex balance of fealty and conscience, and the role given to him colors his character. Often he’s Albrecht’s squire, sometimes his manservant. Here, he’s described as his aide, and friend. It showed in how Roland Jones played him.
Wilfred reminded Albrecht that he still had the horn, and asked him for it. When Albrecht dallied, dreaming, he asked again. Then a few times as lightly as he could with his hands, he asked if Albrecht was really sure he wanted to continue his pursuit of Giselle, but can’t bring himself to contradict him. He sensed the potential for disaster, and also the potential for personal disaster if he pushed too hard.
Nanako Yamamoto entered, looking the part of Giselle: small, but ripe. Her first act was a little googly-eyed and by rote, with the obligatory shy entreaties to Albrecht that she had to leave. Like many Giselles, she didn’t fully come alive until she was dead. Marini played the daisy scene with a slight difference of color than usual. His attitude as he removed the offending petal felt more compassionate than sleazy.
Another detail change that showed how closely the production was looking at the story: When Hilarion entered on his usual music, Albrecht greeted him warmly as if they had never met. One of the lovely strengths of this staging was the acting. It was never less than good, in most cases very good, in some cases excellent.
Anthony Pototski, who played Hilarion and is in the second company, ARB2, was one of the most impressive actors. As in many reassessments of Hilarion, this staging set Hilarion up as competition for Albrecht – which arguably he isn’t – but given that choice, Pototski gave it as much justification as possible in his dignity and affection, carrying a bouquet and projecting his frustrations into it.
As he did in “La Sylphide,” a mark of a Kobborg staging is to add more dancing for the men, but with discretion: a phrase here, a jump there, usually with a folk flavor. There was room for more character work for the men there and it can be squeezed in here as well. In both, the dances he made were no worse nor better than the traditional ones, but they kept the company men from feeling sidelined.
Berthe entered the first time carrying an armful of gossamer underskirts. It seemed that she and Giselle were seamstresses, which seemed to have been added to integrate Giselle’s later interest in Bathilde’s dress. At the same time, it worked against the idea that Berthe had vineyards and an inn, which impacted the hunt scene.
After Berthe asked her daughter if she loved Albrecht, she seemed to almost go into a trance, that led to her vision of death and wilis. Madison Elizabeth Egyud stopped Albrecht from trying to follow Giselle indoors with a withering glance: the universal secret weapon of mothers.
Another detail the production wanted to fill in: At the end of the scene, Hilarion encountered Wilfred, in hunting livery, boots and braids, as he was leaving after speaking to Albrecht. Hilarion bowed to him reflexively, but a lightbulb went on and he suddenly wondered if there were a connection.
Erikka Reenstierna-Cates and Ian Hussey entered as Bathilde and the Duke, wearing glorious 19th century outfits designed by Natalia Stewart, but the scene was brutally truncated. Bathilde barely spoke to Giselle and came off as a patronizing bitch. There was no necklace or gift, no advice to use the horn to call them, nor were they invited to rest. Like cuckoos in clocks, they entered and left.
The peasants were alone for the harvest dance, and Hilarion brought in the peasant pas couple in a cart. They were dressed for their wedding, which echoed the couple in the cart from MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Misaki Tajima carried a bouquet that she tossed; Giselle caught it.
These dances and Giselle’s variation were the places the staging tinkered with the most. Even the recording felt as if it used a different orchestration, using a full string section for the melody line. Giselle’s repeated hops on pointe were now on two feet after piqués. It wasn’t the most felicitous; even though the solo was souped-up, it felt thinner. From Yamamoto’s solo, Tajima and Tomoya Suzuki went straight into the entrée from the Peasant Pas de Deux. Neither this, nor Giselle’s solo that we think of as canon are actually from the original production, so they are arguably not sacrosanct. Still, it felt more like someone shuffling the material than rethinking it.
The production did rethink the rest of Peasant Pas, which was an interpolation added early on. After the entree all the music until the coda was repurposed. Giselle and Albrecht did a pas d’action to the adagio; she was coy and avoided him before she relented and they danced a short duet.
The man’s two variations were parceled out, first to Albrecht, then Hilarion immediately after, setting up a competition. There was a lot of scavenging in this segment from familiar sources – first from “Romeo and Juliet,” then from James’ and Gurn’s variations in “La Sylphide.” Albrecht and Hilarion aren’t James and Gurn, and Hilarion isn’t competition for Albrecht, but if it was a discussable idea, it was at least executed well. Marini was a lovely dancer with clean lines, Pototski did his more character-infused variation with verve. After the festivities, he sneaked into Albrecht’s shed to produce his cape and sword (that we hadn’t seen to this point) as well as the horn.
The dancing swung into a finale that made it up slightly to the Peasant Pas couple with a short entry. During the dancing, Hilarion tried to get Giselle alone to tell her in private what he found. He couldn’t, so he screwed up his courage and that’s what precipitated him to push them apart at the crash in the music. It was one of the most deft additions, well-detailed by Pototski.
The confrontation and the blowing of the horn was shuffled and complicated, necessitating bald and awkward editing of the recorded score. After about four calls by Hilarion goading Albrecht into running after him, there was the fateful response.
Again, the action was clearly detailed, even with a freer hand. Wilfred raced in first, agitated. Bathilde saw Albrecht in disguise and laughed at him. One of the most striking moments was for the Duke. He spied Albrecht heading to Giselle and put his cane across Albrecht’s path to bar him. Hussey made the small, quiet moment powerfully intimidating as rank confronted guilt.
Rather than trying to weasel his way out, Marini played Albrecht as sensing the game was up then and there. Jones kept him at the side, making a small hand gesture to just stay put. Bathilde went into shock and turned away.
The production’s mad scene was more naturalistic and less supernatural than Ratmansky’s recent staging. When Yamamoto came upon the sword, she went after it, swinging it in the air. She recognized Albrecht at the end but died, slipping out of his arms.
If Kobborg was the primary stager (that’s my guess from what I’ve seen of both men’s work before, and because it would be costly and strange for Stiefel to bring Kobborg all the way to New Zealand to do a few touches on a work he intended to mostly do himself) both the setting of the aftermath and the opening of the next act showed in subtle ways how Danish he is. His focus was as much on the community as the main characters. Berthe shoved Albrecht away after he kissed Giselle’s lifeless body. As he often does, Albrecht ran in a circle pleading with the crowd. They didn’t just turn away; the men pushed Albrecht. It was a group rejection.
As the next act opened at Giselle’s grave Hilarion was grieving, and the town folk, lanterns in hand, comforted him. From Bournonville’s townfolk in “Napoli” holding lights after a storm or confronting Gennaro to the civil disobedience in World War II, this setting painted the solidarity of a community with Danish hues.
ARB is a tiny company, only eight women are full company members. The cast had to be filled out with not just apprentices and a small second company, but school trainees. Even so, twelve wilis plus Myrtha and two demi-soloists stretched the resources to the limit. But if ARB climbed from regional to something beyond that, it did it during the wilis section.
The setting dealt with the paucity of bodies by moving them all back a panel, and was intelligent on moving between two lines of six and three of four for the strongest effect. The women were coached to be swirly-wooshy rather than classical in their head movements, but there’s an argument for that sweep as fitting the emotions of the scene.
Like many of the women, Reenstierna-Cates did double duty, reappearing in Act 2 as Zulma. She’s tall, with a glorious line, and colored the role with sad eyes and a haunting, downcast demeanor. It would have been perfect had her shoe not mushed out of a balance.
Annie Johnson’s Myrtha was just about everything Myrtha is supposed to be. Her good dancing was pulled up more than a notch by wonderful acting and presence. She had been coached to know her story and take the stage. Her only blemish, an incomplete line of her shoe and foot when turned out, was more than mitigated by the rest of performance. She could stop your heart beating by posing in a tendu back.
The wilis lined up at the back of the stage at one point, an uncommon choice, but a good one for making the stage seem more full. Joseph R. Walls lit the set beautifully, turning the darkness gold.
As the section built to a crescendo, Johnson flew out again, flicking to arabesque like a needle, then into another aerial circle of saut de basques. She was ferocious with her myrtle branch when bringing Giselle out. You could see the corps struggle to hold the last arabesque before their exit, but they did it. Most importantly, they got it. They got what the scene, and their presence meant; they got that it mattered. They got their wilis on. The rehearsal direction was credited to Hussey and also former American Ballet Theatre principal Sarah Lane, as well as individual coaching by ballerina Gillian Murphy, who is Artistic Associate, and also danced this staging in New Zealand. Everyone involved should be proud.
Marini arrived at the grave alone, cloaked and bearing a bouquet. It was pretty, until he saw the grave. Then he broke down. Another added detail: Marini reached into his tunic to bring out the daisy he had somehow retrieved and put it on the arm of the cross before stretching himself at the grave.
Pototski’s death scene capped off his performance. After dancing with terror in his eyes, the women pushed him out and you could see smoke rise from the pond as he drowned.
If Yamamoto was a late bloomer, she got there by the pas d’action: finding a different, more open face and softer, rippling bourrées. The grand pas was composed of beautiful, silent lifts. But by the end, Marini was genuinely tired, not just play-acting. He started to run out of gas at his variation, smudged his double cabrioles and lost his tours that were upped a degree of difficulty with arms overhead. After his entrechats, done with arms slowly rising towards heaven, he ended with a clean tour in passé and just fell, exhausted as the character and probably as himself as well.
Yamamoto cradled him and with one arm softly brushing back, she swept the wilis offstage. She found the daisy and presented it to Marini. He sobbed. No matter how the journey might have been, everyone got there.
A tacked-on ending with Albrecht revisiting the forest was the weakest choice in a solid production. It’s good to know what happens to Albrecht after, but part of what has to happen is that Giselle redeems him. If we need to see anything, it’s that he has changed for the better.
Quibbling with details in “Giselle” is only worth the effort when the underlying production is sound, and this one was. It was sensibly staged, punctiliously coached and performed with staunch commitment. From all of that, it made sense both moment to moment and overall.
“Giselle” can make a company in a way other ballets can’t. A smaller one is possible, and it can also function as a stepping stone to bigger works. But the ballet can work magic on those willing. This cast may not have become instant superstars, but good dancers trying more than their hardest can become, if even for an afternoon, great.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Giselle” – American Repertory Ballet
New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, New Brunswick, NJ
March 4, 2023
Cover: Nanako Yamamoto and Annie Johnson in “Giselle.” Photo © Rosalie O’Connor.
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