English National Ballet, Mary Skeaping’s Giselle (2017)

Mary Skeaping’s Giselle, we are told, aims to be a historically-accurate version of the ballet in its use of Adolphe Adam’s original score for the 1841 production. Well, most of the score in any case—for audiences today, the ballet would not be complete without Giselle’s variations in Acts 1 and 2, both of which were set to music by other composers and added to give the leading ballerina an opportunity to showcase her technique (see Markova for a magnificent, precedent-setting example). Indeed, with Giselle’s Act 1 variation being ubiquitously performed in the ballet competition circuit these days, it is easy to see those brief minutes and familiar steps as standing quite apart from the narrative.

However, for Laurretta Summerscales, one of the English National Ballet’s newest principals, Giselle’s variations were more than a virtuoso display. While Summerscales can certainly hold her own in any technical competition (as evinced, for instance, by her first gloriously suspended piqué arabesque of the Act 1 variation), her debut on Friday evening was a Giselle with both classical purity and real emotional depth, conveying the exhilaration of young love with light jumps and generous port de bras. Some ballet-goers often bemoan the dearth of ‘home-grown dancers’, but Summerscales’ flawless performance demonstrated that there is hardly anything to worry about. She was well-matched by Xander Parish, whose Albrecht in Act 1 was so noble that you wonder why the villagers didn’t immediately guess that this was a prince in their midst, and a prince very much missed in London.

Act 2, however, is where the real triumph of this production lies. This writer was moved to tears at the Royal Ballet’s Peter Wright Giselle last season when Marianela Núñez appeared to hover weightlessly above the ground as her bourrées took her swiftly and silently across the stage in Myrthe’s first appearance. It was an image of sheer ethereal beauty that I shall never forget, further cemented by the Royal’s corps and the incomparable Natalia Osipova. This is clearly not the intent of Skeaping’s production, where Act 2 opens with a group of huntsmen in a misty forest, and fleeting appearances of the ghostly Wilis. There is something sinister about this place: unsafe, threatening, and mysterious. This tension is further underscored by the fury of Michaela DePrince’s Myrthe (another confident and assured debut), accentuated with her powerful travelling jetés. Yes, there is beauty in Skeaping’s forest, but it is a beauty we ought to be afraid of. Unsurprisingly enough, this is a point often missed by male producers and choreographers.

The ENB’s army of Wilis similarly danced with real attack: every temps levé and grand jeté conveyed real scorn and disdain for the men they were dancing to their deaths. You deserve this, they seemed to say. Skeaping’s restoration of the original score—and especially of the fugue scene where Albrecht seeks refuge at the cross on Giselle’s grave—was highly effective in this sense. Skeaping’s Act 2 was thus not only about love, forgiveness and redemption, but also of conflict between the sacred and the profane, and of course, between man and woman as well. The menacing overtones of Act 2 are in turn finely balanced by the romanticism that Skeaping retains in the pas de deux and the ballet’s ending. Summerscales and Parish are so painfully poignant and tender in Act 2’s adagio moments that you truly and desperately believe in their love beyond the grave. This writer personally finds Albrecht to be an inherently unlikeable character (he is, after all, lying to both Giselle and Bathilde), but in Parish’s able hands, one cannot help but see why Giselle continues to love him. His impeccably-danced climatic solo prompted the loudest applause of the night (and a very enthusiastic Bravo! from someone sitting in the Stalls).

As with the best history lessons, Skeaping’s Giselle forces us to see its contemporary versions in a different way. We ought to be afraid of toying with the hearts of those who love us. And it is history very much worth repeating over and over again.