The Salon
Do you think he deserves to be saved?’
‘Albrecht?’ I lowered my soup spoon and considered the question. ‘I suppose it depends which character you ask.’
‘Giselle’s mother would vehemently disagree that he deserves to be saved,’ I continued. ‘Hilarion – well, Hilarion’s already dead by the time Albrecht’s brought before Myrtha, so he doesn’t get a say.’
Sander gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘But Giselle thinks Albrecht does. Or does she?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Does she save him even though she knows he does not deserve it? So pure of heart that she cannot help herself, even in death?’
‘I don’t think it’s that her heart is pure.
It’s that her love for him is strong enough to defy anything.
Even a vengeful fairy out for blood.’ I finished the bread roll, waiting for enough energy to get me off my backside and onto the tube.
‘It’s a very Romantic notion: awestruck by the power of the natural world, while also believing a little of that power lives in the human spirit. Why do you ask? What do you think?’
A wry smile – he was fond of those. ‘I have not decided. Yet. Perhaps he deserves same fate as Hilarion. After all, he has trespassed on supernatural territory. Myrtha’s gesture is law.’
‘You mean, her word is law.’
He shook his head and crossed his wrists. ‘No. Gesture.’
‘Oh, of course. No words in ballet.’ I resisted the urge to hide my face behind my hand, feeling loopy with exhaustion.
‘If she decides he must dance to death, then dance he must.’
‘Well, when you put it like that…’ I laughed.
‘No, think of it this way: even if Giselle can’t forgive him for betraying her in life, she has nothing to gain from him dying a horrible death.
It won’t bring her back. You might even say that by protecting him until dawn, she’s meted out his true punishment. The rightful one.’
Sander tilted his head.
‘He has to live.’
He nodded slowly, earnestly. ‘Must find a way through life without her, but always with knowledge of what he did.’
‘To err is human,’ I said, pointing to myself as the prime example. He reached across the little round table and tapped my shoulder.
‘You. Will. Be. Great.’
‘Why are you poking me?’
‘To make the message… uh…’
‘Sink in?’
‘Yes! Sink in.’
We spoke more about character motivations, about what we would have done in Albrecht’s shoes, and the point at which his ruse goes from a bit of harmless fun to reckless manipulation.
‘Are you going to play Albrecht the same way every time? What sort of a man is he, do you think?’
‘Depends. Start of Act I, he is hero; end of Act I, villain. Start of Act II, tragic fool; end of Act II, tragic hero.’ He mopped up the last traces of his soup. ‘Who do you think he is?’
‘What a way to sum him up. I quite like that. The thing I’ve never been able to settle on is whether he’s stringing Giselle along, fully aware that her love for him will come to nothing, or whether he’s caught up in the fantasy himself.
Is he living a double life, sincerely believing that he can cast off his title and play house with her forever? ’
‘Oh, he loves her.’ Sander glanced away as a server collected our empty bowls. ‘It is Bathilde for whom he must pretend. He cares not for his title at all. Gets away from the castle whenever he can.’
As we were talking, I quietly hit upon why being around Sander felt so different from being around other men, whether friends, partners, or lovers (if someone like me was even entitled to use the word). It was the way he made eye contact: the soft beam of undivided attention.
‘So it’s not a joke to him?’
‘The escape is the joke. Giselle, not.’
I pushed up the sleeves of my jumper, partly as an excuse to look away.
My muscles should have cooled by now, but I felt warmer than when we’d sat down.
I should have been thinking about going home.
And yet, Ray’s confident declaration beckoned to me like the glow of a house from across a cold street.
I didn’t know what to make of Sander anymore, what he made of me.
Whether thoughts of me followed him home, or whether he left me at work where I belonged. That ambiguity kept me at the table.
‘The other question, of course, is whether he met Giselle before or after agreeing to marry Bathilde. I suppose that’s for you to decide on the night.’
Sander nodded more solemnly than I was expecting. ‘If after, then he is a coward.’
‘Well, he’s a young man who isn’t thinking properly. Whichever way you spin it, he’s put himself in an impossible situation.’
‘Like Solor.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I hadn’t even thought about that…’
The grandfather clock by the drinks bar chimed a quarter to seven, and I suddenly noticed how busy the Salon had become.
Before the start of the Giselle run, the Dance Hall was hosting a touring ballet company from Canada and their production of Balanchine’s Jewels.
Sander and I had been talking for an hour and a half without even noticing that the room was abuzz with audience members dressed to the nines, while we were still in our post-rehearsal civilian clothes.
Wherever I turned my head, others turned away, some of them hiding smiles behind cigarettes or wine glasses. ‘We should probably head off.’
Sander nodded, then gestured to a couple who had been relegated to a square of carpet by the door that they could have our table. As he did, the woman put a hand on his forearm and gasped in recognition, before clocking me and gasping again.
‘Oh, but you’re both so fabulous, so absolutely divine.’
‘Thank you,’ we mumbled. I wished I had a tortoise shell into which I could retreat.
‘We can’t make any of your Giselle performances, but we just now managed to buy two tickets for your second performance of La Bayadère.’ She still hadn’t let go of Sander’s arm; he didn’t seem to know how to extricate it.
‘Very much looking forward to it,’ the man said to me, and only me. He looked me up and down so quickly, in such a practised way, that I almost failed to notice.
I smiled. ‘Thank you so much. We’re looking forward to performing it.’
‘Nikiya, or Gamzatti?’ he asked.
‘Nikiya.’
He nodded in slow approval. ‘Very nice.’
I kept the smile up until we scooted out of the Salon and down the back stairs, waving goodnight to Frank the doorman.
As I put my hands in my pockets to ward off the evening chill, Sander looped a hand around my elbow and gently stopped me from walking on.
He coaxed my other arm around his back into a ballroom hold, our hands pressed together.
I was so taken aback that I said nothing at all. The novelty of being this close to him outdoors, protected from the last bite of winter. His wool coat, soft and thick, smelt of pine needles. We swayed in the middle of the pavement, the gentlest, tiniest steps I had ever danced with him.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, confused but oddly relaxed.
‘Making certain your last dance of the day makes you smile. Not cry.’
It worked – he pointed triumphantly as the muscles in my face relaxed and lifted, as if he’d cast a spell. Then, he glimpsed something through the Dance Hall windowfront and stepped back, quickly waving goodnight to me. We never went home the same way; I kept forgetting to ask where he lived.
When I looked where he’d been looking, I flinched.
A small group of women in long-sleeved velvet dresses and statement earrings were staring at me through the window.
One of them gave an excited, pearly grin and waved.
I had no idea who she was, but waved back.
Her friends had their heads together, discussing something animatedly.
As I put my hands back in my pockets and made for Holborn, I realised it must have been the sight of me and Sander, principal dancers without a stage, locked in a close embrace.
The Greater London Gazette
GISELLE: A NEW DAY DAWNS AT THE COVENT GARDEN DANCE HALL
Culture, Stage Reviews, Ballet
Terry Whist
Monday, 9 February 1987
Having first reworked it for the Birmingham Ballet, Sir Peter Wright has now brought his take on Giselle, a thing of spectral beauty, down south to the British Classical Ballet Company.
One week in, the dancers have embraced this new incarnation with aplomb.
Among the oldest full-length ballets to survive with its original choreography largely intact – by Jules Perrot and Jean Corelli, with additions by Petipa and now Wright – the titular Giselle believes herself to be in a romantic comedy, playing and flirting with the charming Albrecht.
Her true identity as a tragic heroine is revealed in the climax of Act I, her fate sealed by Hilarion’s discovery of her lover’s true identity: a nobleman fleeing an impending betrothal.
In this run, Albrecht is played alternately by Tomas Avila (ruggedly debonair), Fabrizio Giardella (lithe as an otter), Ray Novak (whose all-American sheen works to his advantage), and Aleksander Sylvan (arguably too regal to masquerade as a peasant, but his exquisite technique more than adequately compensates).
While the other male principals of the BCBC appear to have heightened their press lifts and jumps, Sylvan has learned how to temper his.
For once, his solos do not outshine the leading ballerinas, not because of any loss in skill, but because he has refined it.
It is also refreshing to see an expansion in his acting range, from the novelty of exhaustion in Act II’s perilous dance to the near-death, to his frozen horror at the end of Act I when, upon trying to take Giselle’s arm and lead her out of her madness, she hooks her arm through thin air and reprises their first gazelle-like pas de deux alone – the dissonance is perfect.
As for the other notable male role, Stephen Reid’s and Oliver Torch’s Hilarions are particularly conniving, a joy to despise as they allow jealousy to take over and destroy the village’s peace.
Narratively speaking, Wright’s Giselle has mastered what the luxurious ballets of Imperial Russia never did: concision.
No scene is wasted; thanks to impressive turns by lead couples Max Breton/Rosie Morden and Charles Meesters/Isabel Tsuda, even the light-hearted Pas de Six of Act I moves so swiftly and energetically that it earns its keep alongside the heartbreaking confrontation and chilling “mad scene”.
As for the misty purgatory of Act II, the twenty-six Wilis have rightfully garnered applause night after night for executing lines of feather-light hopping arabesques and punishing ballottés with a luminously diabolical Myrtha at the forefront.
Having recently returned from injury leave, Crystal Collins was a little shaky in her extensions towards the beginning of her first performance, but returned to top form in due course; she, Annie Petrowsky, and Blanca Ojeda commit masterfully to their ruthless commanders of scorned women, summoning the Wilis to their moonlit assembly with sweeping arcs of magic rosemary branches.
However, the clue is in the name: this ballet lives and dies on the artistry, stamina, and precision of Giselle herself.
Much like Aurora or Juliet, she must embody the dualism of vulnerability and strength, na?veté and power, allegro and adagio.
Fortunately for balletomanes, the BCBC has delivered on its casting: first soloist Akihiko Kuriyama is charming in Act I and radiant in Act II, proving her mettle alongside established leading ladies Grace Langham, Violeta Kursumovic, Magne Sund, and, pushing herself ever harder in her cornucopia of debut leading roles, Patricia Errington.
The latter of these sublime ballerinas holds nothing back in Act I, matching Sylvan for agility in her pirouettes, and deftly balancing Giselle’s dramatic, defiant gestures against Myrtha in Act II with the slower, softer stretches of her adages.
She, her fellow dancers, and Sir Peter Wright have successfully breathed new life into these 150-year-old ghosts.
Giselle is in rep at the Covent Garden Dance Hall until 7 March, with varying casts.