National Ballet proves this dance is no fossil
Giselle (out of 4) National Ballet of Canada. Choreography by Peter Wright after Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa. Until Sunday at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W.; national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595 or 1-866-345-9595
Just because Giselle is 175 years old and populated, at least in its second act, by hard-core fairies, does not mean it’s a museum piece for fossilized ballet fans.
Cut through the surface and Giselle’s central themes of love, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption still resonate, as demonstrated by the National Ballet of Canada on Wednesday night when the company revived its familiar production of the Romantic era classic.
The evening’s title lead, Russianborn Svetlana Lunkina, first portrayed Giselle in her late teens, early in her career with the Bolshoi Ballet.
It became a signature role. Although a decade younger at age 25, New Zealander Harrison James is no stranger to Albrecht, the philandering nobleman who steals and then breaks the susceptible peasant-girl’s heart. James danced the role four years ago at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in a Giselle produced by Britain’s Sir Peter Wright, the same man who first staged the National Ballet’s version in 1970.
The National Ballet still uses Desmond Heeley’s atmospheric and delightful original design and, Heeley having died on June 10 at age 85, dedicated the performance to his memory. Experience provides opportunity for reflection, and both Lunkina and James not only danced beautifully but invested their roles with compelling dramatic depth.
Lunkina projected such touching innocence and vulnerability there were moments in Act I, the village scene, when you felt inclined to shout out: “Hey, this guy you’ve fallen for is a two-timing bastard.”
But you could equally understand how easily Lunkina’s Giselle could fall prey to an Albrecht as charming and apparently besotted as that presented by James. From the moment he enters you get the sense that this Albrecht, already betrothed in what we may assume is an arranged union, has escaped to a charmed world where he can set aside the weight of life up at the castle and give his heart free rein.
He’s irresponsible and thoughtless but not wilfully predatory.
When Albrecht’s duplicity is exposed by Giselle’s suspicious rival suitor, Hilarion, sympathetically portrayed by Piotr Stanczyk, reality sets in as the young aristocrat is confronted by the consequences of his dalliance and must watch as the girl he claimed to love loses her mind and stabs herself with his own sword. Lunkina made that famous “Mad Scene” electrifying and utterly believable.
In Act II she reappears, now as an initiate into the grim nocturnal sorority of jilted maidens, ruled over by an imperious Heather Ogden as Queen of the Wilis; no garden-variety fairies these Wilis, intent as they are on destroying the male perpetrators of their doom.
Lunkina achieved the transformation to an ethereal creature splendidly with adagio dancing of poetic loveliness and James, whose life Giselle saves, was a model of earnest contrition.
Overall, it was a compelling performance despite some bumpy partnering in the Act I peasant pas de quatre; but can first-year corps member Laurynas Vejalis ever turn!
The mime sequences, of which there are extended passages in Act I, were delivered with almost conversational naturalness.
Principal character artist Lorna Geddes, a veteran company member of 57 years’ service, is a fine exemplar in this regard. But is it unduly harsh to suggest that her character, Bertha, would be more appropriately billed as Giselle’s granny rather than mother?