Friday 15 November 2019

National Ballet 2019-2020 # 1: The Ballerina's "Hamlet"

I must have seen Giselle staged by the National Ballet, in its current form, at least ten times now -- and maybe more -- in nearly four decades of ballet experience.  But this cornerstone classic still manages to capture my imagination, sneaking in under my guard and drawing me into its purely Romantic imaginative world.

Although surprisingly compact at just 2 hours running time including the intermission, Giselle still presents a significant test of two leading female artists.  The title role is known as "the ballerina's Hamlet," both for its huge emotional range and for the need to create a clear arc within the character which will shape that emotional range into a coherent and believable journey.

A different challenge awaits the dancer who portrays Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis in Act 2.  Myrtha demands a rock-solid characterization of cold, vengeful anger and that emotional state must infuse the dancer's entire face, body, and every bit of movement for 40 minutes.

Giselle requires equally detailed characterization from the male lead in the role of Albrecht, and was in fact one of the first ballets to create a significant role for the man, beyond simply dancing attendance on the woman.

There are also the very specific stylistic needs of the early Romantic style of dance, a style which still owes much to the grace and elegance of the ballet as it was known in the eighteenth century.  The extensive acrobatics of the later Russian school have little place here.  Rather, this style calls for light and airy movement, especially in stylish execution of the numerous leaps or grands jetés. 

Given these parameters, Giselle becomes a natural candidate for me to attend more than one performance, and see more than one cast at work.  In an era when every level of the company has incredible depth, the National Ballet's management has cast almost every performance of this run with different leads.

On Friday night, we saw Sonia Rodriguez as Giselle, Francesco Gabriele Frola as Albrecht, Skylar Campbell as Hilarion, and Jenna Savella as Myrtha.

On Saturday afternoon, we had Svetlana Lunkina as Giselle, Harrison James as Albrecht, Piotr Stanczyk as Hilarion, and Hannah Fischer as Myrtha.

Start with Hilarion, a role in which character mime becomes much more significant than actual dancing.  Skylar Campbell's performance highlighted the frustration he felt at Giselle's wilful behaviour, while Piotr Stanczyk emphasized the anger he directed at Albrecht.  Both were outstanding in their death scenes.

Francesco Gabriele Frola presented a patrician Albrecht, cool and elegant.  That characteristic infused his dancing in his solos, and in his duets with Giselle.  Harrison James projected a more vulnerable side of the character, and gave more weight to the dilemma between love and duty which traps Albrecht.  There was little to choose between them in the technical side of the role.

And there was little to choose between Jenna Savella and Hannah Fischer.  Both were superb, right from the all-important initial crossing of the stage on pointe -- the illusion of floating on air came clearly across even though the smoke generator was not used here as it had been in the last staging of the work 3 years ago.  Savella (in a role debut) was noteworthy for the hard edge she brought to her grand jeté, while Fischer excelled in the rigidity of her face and posture, creating that overall sense of cold rage so essential to the character.

Sonia Rodriguez beautifully portrayed the playful, girlish air of Giselle in the opening scenes, dancing with equal measures of grace and lightness.  That grace keynoted her performance in Act 2 as well, her solo in the pas de deux an outstanding moment.  Svetlana Lunkina gave a larger, more dramatic reading of the crucial mad scene, giving the entire ballet a more emphatic turning point.  Her work in Act 2 then highlighted love and regret in equal measures, her dancing throughout being suffused with those emotions.

The corps de ballet did fine work in the peasant dances of Act 1, with some splendid solo work in the first act pas de quatre.  In the second act, the women moved with impressive unanimity, with the difficult sequence of hopping across the stage while poised in an arabesque a real highlight.

This may all sound like a game of swings and roundabouts, and in a technical sense it is.  But ballet remains, first and foremost, a theatrical art.  And so, we have to look also for that indefinable extra something, the elusive quality that changes a good performance into a great one.  In the case of Giselle, as in most romantic tales, that special je ne sais quoi has to occur primarily between the two romantic leads.

And on Saturday, with Svetlana Lunkina and Harrison James, that extra dimension of magic was undeniably present.  On Friday, I admired the competence and beauty of the dancing.  On Saturday, I found myself caught up in the emotional world of Giselle, overwhelmed by the tragic power of the story.

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