One of the strengths of the ballet Giselle is that dance itself is so entwined with the subject matter. Dancing is the peasant girl Giselle’s great talent and joy, but also the thing that threatens her weak heart. And in the second act, dance is how the wilis, the ghostly spirits of betrayed women, enact their curse on men who cross their path, forced to dance themselves to death. Dance can be pleasure and punishment (something ballet dancers know all about).
But there are many reasons this finest of Romantic ballets endures 183 years after its debut: the tight focus on the central characters and plot, without much filler; the rich role for a ballerina veering from innocence to madness to the afterlife. This version was created for English National Ballet in 1971 by Mary Skeaping, who restored elements of the original, including mime, and some of her amendments help thread together the two very different halves of this ballet – pastoral peasant life and the world of the supernatural.
Katja Khaniukova is the opening night’s Giselle, dancing with delicate soft landings – Giselle is a girl who never shouts – and a warm glow, like the autumnal leaves framing the stage’s Rhineland setting. A playful, dreamy relationship develops between Giselle and Albrecht (Aitor Arrieta), a nobleman pretending to be a peasant, who will ultimately betray her. Arrieta dances handsomely, he’s not an all-out cad, just someone used to a charmed life. You believe his feelings for Giselle and there’s room for the idea that here’s a man wishing to escape the shackles of duty and live freely, before real life catches up with him.
The ballet builds an enveloping atmosphere, but the delight is in the details: the way in a confrontation between Albrecht and gamekeeper Hilarion (a hardworking Fabian Reimair), Albrecht automatically reaches for his sword, which isn’t there because he’s in peasant cosplay, but Hilarion clocks it; the moment Alison McWhinney’s Myrtha, queen of the wilis, hears the gamekeepers in the woods and her previously steely expression glints with a sly smile, as if to say: Aha! Victims! There’s much to relish in this very beautiful production that retains a worthy place in ENB’s rep.
• At London Coliseum until 21 January
