Sylvie Guillem's Giselle, first staged in 1998 for the Finnish National Ballet and now danced in London by La Scala, looks partly like an attempt to re-create the ballet in her image. Before this production Guillem had tried to portray the ballet's heroine through the lens of modern psychology, dancing Giselle as a far more independent, critical woman than the innocent of the libretto.
Her interpretation always worked movingly on its own terms but was at odds with traditional productions, which remained committed to a mistier style and period. She needed a different frame. As Guillem put it, she wanted to make "the blood flow through the veins" of all the characters. To this end she tweaked the extant choreography, repointed the action and, with designer Paul Brown, relocated the ballet to a generic European village.
With the help of Brown's swiftly changing set, the ballet now has a fluid cinematic quality. In the first act the corps de ballet have been recast as a crowd of individuals, each with their own costume and identity. So eager is Guillem to make her characters credible that she often sacrifices steps to acting: with the lively collusion of La Scala's dancers, Giselle's village comes alive more sharply than I've ever seen it before. The local band of musicians who play for the peasant pas de deux, the villagers' endemic mix of superstition and religion - detail after detail makes this seem like a real place.
The problem with so much dramatic realism, however, is that it undermines the structure by which the ballet's love story unfolds. There isn't enough physical or imaginative space for Giselle and Albrecht to dominate, and this issue is complicated by the imbalance between the two principals. Massimo Murru's Albrecht lacks the charisma to impose himself on such a busy stage, or to seduce Guillem's compelling Giselle.
And Guillem hasn't solved her interpretative dilemma. The crux of this ballet is that its vulnerable little heroine dies of a broken heart. Guillem is so lively and active around the village that her Giselle looks far more likely to stand for mayor than to collapse into an early grave.
In act two I sympathised with the attempt to clarify Giselle's struggle with the Queen of the Wilis for Albrecht's soul. But the Wilis themselves, spotless and stylish, look too much like models in a photoshoot from Brides magazine to cast a ghostly chill. This act clinches the production's central problem: ballet can only withstand so much reason. Explain too much, and the poetry gets lost in the logic.
Until Saturday. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
