Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets in Helgi Tomasson's Giselle. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
The real test of a ballet company may reside in consistency. For various reasons, until Thursday (Feb. 21), I was unable to catch up with the San Francisco Ballet’s revival of artistic director Helgi Tomasson’s Giselle, the troupe’s fifth go-round since the premiere of this staging in 1999. To put it mildly, this traditional version of the enduring 1841 Romantic classic has legs. Dozens of them, beautifully aligned and shaped, responsive to virtually every possibility in the tiresome Adolphe Adam score.
More’s the miracle. Reviving Giselle so masterfully in this eventful, landmark season is a tribute to the strength in the ranks, specifically, to the contribution of Tomasson’s assistant director, Lola de Avila. On Thursday at the War Memorial Opera House, you could exult in the buoyant arabesques sautés launched by the 24 Wilis, the spirits of the maidens abandoned by those dastardly men. You could relish the peasant ensembles in Act I, which have not looked so cohesive in seasons past. Tomasson and his company have refined the mime elements, so that no detail looks extraneous or distracting to the overall effect. Giselle is the 2008 season’s only full-length narrative and everyone seems to have marshaled their dramatic instincts in its cause.
This Giselle remains the finest of Tomasson’s classic stagings. In setting the work, Tomasson drew on what we know of the original French version by Perrot and Coralli and the Russian emendations by Marius Petipa later in the century. Tomasson enlarged the Act I pas de deux to make it a pas de cinq, in order to get more dancers on stage, a noble gesture, perhaps, but I can’t help believe that the original pas de deux, charged with innocence, can serve as a dramatic contrast to the fraught pairings of the central couple.
Still, again, a minor blemish in Act I troubled on Thursday. In 1999, conductor Emil de Cou found previously unused Adam music, which he orchestrated from the piano score. The material has been deployed for an additional ensemble for the villagers and it looks dramatically unjustified. In your bones, you can feel the tension ebbing from the narrative as they all go into their routine.
Act II, however, ensnares us in the redemption of Albrecht and the watery demise of Giselle’s suitor Hilarion. Mikael Melbye’s décor, with its leafy scrims and flying Wilis, is suitably atmospheric, while the scene with Hilarion and his buddies at the beginning only contributes to narrative clarity. In Act II, the lighting by Melbye and Lisa J. Pinkham needs refinement. The arrival of dawn, which saves Albrecht from a dire fate, is barely perceptible. Still, the patterns of the women’s ensemble, as they separate, reassemble and almost sink into the earth lie at the heart of the Romantic agony.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets in Helgi Tomasson's Giselle. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Thursday’s cast was headed by Kristin Long and Gennadi Nedvigin, the only one of this season’s four couples to have danced these roles in the 2005 revival. The pair, who repeat their assignments at the closing performance Sunday at 2 p.m. have found that mutual empathy without which a Giselle will flounder. Long’s success lies in her phrasing. She interprets the protagonist in extended sequences that seem shaped by the music. Long avoids histrionic extremes, yet, in Act I, she succeeds in communicating Giselle’s fragile emotional state, without descending into melodrama. In the forest scene, her essential goodness encircles Albrecht in the most deft of gestures. There is much to admire in Long’s elevation and even turns, but every moment seems to serve the character.
I remain awed by Nedvigin’s refinement and technical assurance. The whizzing entrechats in the Act II variations speak for themselves and so does the way the dancer gestures at Giselle’s house in Act I. But somehow, it doesn’t add up beyond the details. Is Nedvigin’s Albrecht a vile seducer, or is he a genuinely lovestruck aristocrat who simply goes too far? The characterization remains elusive, the burning passion that reaches across the proscenium only intermittently in evidence.
Speaking of passion, why, in this context, were we deprived of seeing Pierre-François Vilanoba’s Albrecht this month? Along with now-retired Yuri Possokhov, his was the most stirring impersonation I’ve experienced at SFB.
On Thursday, characterization was no problem for Molly Smolen’s first SFB Myrtha. Lightness, rather than implacability marked the impressive jumps and bourrées, and the gestural language was clear and decisive. Pascal Molat was luxurious casting for Hilarion, but the dancer treated "the other guy" as if it were a major assignment, edged with nastiness. Myrtha’s two lieutenants (Moyna and Zulma in the original libretto) found airy interpreters in Clara Blanco and Elizabeth Miner.
These women joined Sarah Van Patten, Garrett Anderson and Nicolas Blanc for an energetic peasant quintet in the first act, where Pauli Magierek’s Bathilde fused hauteur and empathy. Paul Ehrlich was the viola soloist in Act II. Music director Martin West did all humanly possible in the pit.
Still, there’s been something odd in the manner in which SFB has handled this Giselle revival. The company announced casting only days before the first performance last week, then dribbled out the information for the rest of the run and you had to check the website for the names. Why the troupe can reveal casting for Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet weeks early and be so stingy with Giselle is a mystery. All dancers are not the same; ballet fans have their favorites; why deny them satisfaction? It’s all very peculiar.
