Giselle

Director’s Note:

Ah, Giselle. The Supernatural World… Romanticism…ideals I tend to try not to wallow in. And yet, Giselle was the first ballet I ever saw. Baryshnikov and Makarova. In my mind, that is what every ballet dancer is supposed to look like. That said, I have no need to stage a strictly traditional version of Giselle. Plenty of ballet companies around the world can flood the stage with an army of ghostly maidens in white, eager to take their revenge on the male of the species. A quarter century ago, Dance Theatre of Harlem staged a celebrated version of the piece that took it from the lithographic past of Europe and placed it into the antebellum South. So why not place it into a context that makes sense to our Southern California audiences? A Spanish colonial California, where local Mexican peasants are overseen by Spanish noblemen. As I have gotten more and more into world of the piece, I have gotten more comfortable with the elements of the choreography I want to stress, focus on, or even eliminate. What is there to move the story forward? What is there to illuminate the Romantic ideal? What is there as a bit of a museum piece? All are valid, but in telling the story, what is the most important? We recently performed an excerpt of the 2nd Act for a group of students. I wanted to make sure that I was speaking from a place of knowledge as I introduced the piece, so I did quick online search to get the date the piece was original premiered in Paris. A quick search let me know that Giselle was premised in 1841 on June 28th. I was born June 28th, 1961. 120 years to the date. Perhaps, I was meant to wallow in the supernatural with this one.

Thanks to Giselle sponsor: