Giselle and the Jewish Chronicle share a birthday – the ballet was first performed back in 1841, the very year this newspaper made its first appearance on newsstands.
It is nice to know that both the paper and the ballet are still going strong. The ballet has remained an audience favourite and English National Ballet concluded its season at the London Coliseum with Akram Khan’s Giselle, a bold reimagining of the classic work. Celebrating ten years since its creation, this Giselle is a production to savour.
Instead of peasants and local aristocracy we have migrant outcasts and their cruel landlords. The themes of betrayal and enduring love are still there but reworked into a powerful piece using a clever fusion of ballet, contemporary movement and classical Indian dance. Vincenzo Lamagna has composed a compelling, pulsating score in which it is still possible to trace melodies found in Adolphe Adam’s original music.
Act II is thrilling: the Wilis are the stuff of nightmares as they dispatch Hilarion with chilling efficiency. In the traditional version, the Wilis are scary but lovely, in their long romantic tutus and fairy wings. Here Khan has them dressed in rags, long hair flowing and clutching oversized knitting needles in their mouths (a nod to the work they did in their former lives). You are more likely to meet them in a horror movie than in a woodland glade.
On opening night, Emily Suzuki’s Giselle was both strong and loving, and though she looked fragile, showed a strength of personality we do not usually see in the heroine. James Streeter was wonderful as her lover Albrecht – what a fine dancer he is – and Ken Saruhashi dominated as Hilarion. Streeter does not have the typical build of a ballet dancer and brings a welcome masculinity to everything he dances. Emma Hawes stole the show as an implacable Myrtha, presiding over her legion of ghostly Wilis with a heart of ice.
This is a brilliant, shocking interpretation of the familiar story – you will not find any classical prettiness here, just dancing that devastates with its power.
Akram Khan’s Giselle
London Coliseum
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