Alastair Macaulay: Why does Giselle think she’s English?

A first review of London’s latest dance revival by the former chief dance critic of the New York Times:

by Alastair Macaulay

English National Ballet – which was London Festival Ballet until 1989 – has always been a misnomer: its connections to English nationality are few. It’s now following its “Nutcracker” at the London Coliseum with an eleven-day season of “Giselle” in the same theatre (it also has London seasons at Sadler’s Wells and the Albert Hall); Thursday’s opening cast included a Ukrainian Giselle (Katja Khaniukova), a Basque Spanish Albrecht (Aitor Arrieta), an Australian Myrtha (Alison McWhinney), and many other international participants. The company is a few months into its first year under its new artistic director, Aaron S.Watkin – who is Canadian.

Even so, there are numerous ways in which this “Giselle” takes us closer to the intentions of the makers of this 1841 ballet than the Royal Ballet’s often misguided and unstylish production at Covent Garden; and at times it’s closer to the old Covent Garden style, too. Mary Skeaping (1902-1984) created this historically informed staging in 1971, when the company was London Festival Ballet. It has designs – of exceptional scenic beauty in Act Two – by David Walker (1934-2008), who was a very stylish part of many opera and ballet productions at Covent Garden and English National Opera. To match this, English National Ballet’s 2024 dancers are currently moving with an upper-body plasticity that many of us associate with the Royal Ballet’s Frederick Ashton (1904-1988), who staged an acclaimed “Giselle” at Covent Garden in 1960. The ballet’s Romantic idiom, especially in the scenes for the dramatically mysterious but alluring wilis in Act Two, is gorgeously alive.

Most strikingly, Skeaping (I use the present tense, even though she died more than forty years ago) restores four passages of music in both acts that have usually been cut for more than a century. Of these, the two most remarkable are the extended pas de deux for Giselle and Albrecht in Act One and the fugue for the wilis in Act Two. The fugue comes as a musical shock amid a score otherwise characterised by lyrical flow; but that’s the point. It occurs at the ballet’s supreme dramatic impasse, when the dark power of the nocturnal wilis (who dance men to death in the forest) is blocked when Albrecht takes sanctuary at the cross on Giselle’s grave. (Alexei Ratmansky also restored this in his 2019 production for the Bolshoi in Moscow, as can be seen on YouTube.) “Giselle” scholarship has progressed considerably since this production was new; but even now it does much to add to our sense of this ballet’s subtleties. (No other production of my experience includes that Act One pas de deux.)

It’s amusing to recall that this very company, in the 1990s, temporarily dumped this admirable version in favour of a silly one that updated the ballet to the 1920s, with a car entering the village in Act One. The Skeaping “Giselle” is the oldest and most valuable staging in English National Ballet’s repertory.

It’s to be hoped that Watkin now improves the company’s footwork and lower-body strength. Khaniukova dances and plays Giselle with touching warmth at every moment, but is currently dancing without the precision she has shown in the past. Arrieta partners her gorgeously in Act Two; when lifted in the air, she is at her most pliant and sensuous. He shows the same pleasing innocence in both dancing and acting. Although his duplicity breaks Giselle’s heart, there’s no doubt that it comes from thoughtlessness. What’s missing is heroic ardour in Act Two, along with the sense that he is pouring his dance energies out in hope of joining Giselle in death.

The English National women are currently at their least secure when dancing on point: McWhinney’s bourrées (the travelling step that, when beautifully executed, has often been likened to a string of pearls) across the stage were on the bumpy side, while at least one of the wilis spoilt the dawn climax by teetering insecurely in fifth position. (I suspect this is a temporary problem, possibly exacerbated by “Nutcracker” fatigue.) But the fullness and rounded lines these same women were showing were lovelier than I recall at any point in the last 48 years of this company.

Several other casts follow in this Coliseum season. (Let’s hope the company’s orchestral playing improves quickly.) All ballet companies are works in progress, but English National Ballet, often clunky in the past, under Watkin is changing fast. There are reasons to look forward to the future.