# ‘We fell in love with the ballet and with her’: why 184-year-old Giselle keeps us swooning

The role has inspired the world’s best ballerinas and her story is as popular as ever – whether revived, reimagined or deconstructed. Dancers explain the appeal of Giselle

  
_Natalia Osipova as Giselle with Reece Clarke as Albrecht at the Royal Opera House, London, in 2021. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian_

The story centres on open-hearted Giselle who has fallen deeply in love with Albrecht, not knowing that he is actually a nobleman (and betrothed to boot) who is on holiday from responsibility and only pretending to be a fellow peasant. When she discovers his betrayal, Giselle descends into madness, and depending on which version you watch, either dies of a broken heart, or stabs herself with Albrecht’s sword. The second act shifts from sunny pastorale to ghostly woods and the vengeful wilis, the spirits of jilted women who force men to dance themselves to death. They’re gunning for Albrecht, except that Giselle’s love for him is so enduring that she saves him. It’s a rich role for a ballerina, from girlish to deranged to otherworldly all in one night. “You die for your soul to be free, so you learn how one should love,” Ferri told a meeting of the  recently. “When you are able to dance from that profundity, the ballet is eternal.”

The ballet is as popular as ever, performed by major ballet companies around the world. One of those, , under Yoshida’s direction, is bringing  this summer. It’s also been repeatedly reinvented.  took place in an asylum, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s in a Louisiana plantation. In  production, a huge hit for English National Ballet (it tours to Taiwan in May), Giselle and her fellow “villagers” are migrant factory workers, trapped in poverty behind the set’s huge domineering wall.

Another reimagining of Giselle is about to debut in London made by two artists who had never actually seen the ballet before they decided to make the show. Swiss theatre director François Gremaud was simply looking for a ballet with its heroine’s name in the title, having made a successful piece based on Racine’s Phèdre (he completed the trilogy with operatic heroine Carmen). But in the end, “we fell in love with the ballet, and I must say, with the character,” says Gremaud. His partner in the production is Dutch dancer Samantha van Wissen, known for her work with Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – austere, rigorous contemporary dance that’s worlds away from floaty Romantic ballet. The work they have made, , showing as part of the , is a deconstruction of the ballet, with van Wissen explaining the story, the scenery, the historical context, and playing all the characters.

For Gremaud, it’s about revisiting the work and trying to give a modern take. “Ballet has greatly constrained the female body, not least because it was a masculine projection of the feminine ideal,” he says. “In our show, we wanted to tell the story of the original ballet very faithfully, with respect, and at the same time make a real contemporary gesture by putting on stage a performer who is absolutely free. Samantha improvises her dances every night.”

  
_‘I never thought I could be touched like this by a classical ballet’: Giselle... by François Gremaud and Samantha van Wissen with music by Luca Antignani. Photograph: Dorothée Thébert Filliger_

In the research, Gremaud and van Wissen watched videos of multiple productions, but their favourite was . “It goes beyond technique,” says van Wissen. “You really see, through the movement, the love between those people. It made a link to my work with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, where she always said: ‘It starts from the movement.’ You don’t add too much theatricality, the movement speaks enough.” It was revelatory for van Wissen. “I never thought I could be touched like this by a classical ballet.”

Gremaud says great theatrical characters stand the test of time when they represent universal ideas. For Giselle, that’s unconditional love. “She places love above everything, above revenge, even her own death,” he says. It’s not very feminist though, is it? Unconditional love for someone who treats you badly. “Some have interpreted Giselle as a submissive woman,” Gremaud admits. “But in the second act she really takes control. She’s the one who acts, and it’s thanks to her that Albrecht survives. So she can also, I think, be seen as a strong woman who stands up for what she believes is right.”

  
_From girlish to deranged … James Streeter (Albrecht), Stina Quagebeur (Myrtha) and Tamara Rojo (Giselle) in Akram Khan’s Giselle. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian_

Takahashi danced the leading role in Khan’s version and saw the character recast in a more 21st-century light, but still sees the same woman at heart. “Classical Giselle is quite vulnerable,” she says, “and Akram’s Giselle might look strong, she’s the leader of the group, but I think inside she has the same sensitivity. She’s also very open, she’s a positive person, and when tragedy comes, that really hurts.” Giselle continues to be an inspiration, 184 years on. “It’s a piece of genius,” says choreographer Sally Marie, who is working on an idea for a “Fuck-you feminist sci-fi punk version of Giselle”, yet one she says will be “still filled with the innocence and the longing for love”.

Gremaud found other connections with the present, looking at how the Romantic movement was in part a reaction to the industrial revolution. “They were fighting against the way we were treating nature,” he says. “They were artists who were angry with their world. And the world they were afraid of is the world in which we are living today.” For van Wissen, it’s more of a personal bond. Last summer she finally went to see the ballet Giselle live for the first time, at the Paris Opera. “I felt so connected to her,” she says. “I had tears in my eyes the whole time.”

- Giselle... is at the Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London, 15-16 March, as part of the .
- National Ballet of Japan performs Giselle at the , 24-27 July (booking opens 19 March).
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