Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Weaponizing pointe work: Akram Khan’s trenchant GISELLE radically and strikingly updates the iconic classical ballet

• By drediman
• June 10, 2022
• No Comments

Earlier this week at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, I attended the opening night performance of English National Ballet’s production of Giselle directed and choreographed by international dance superstar Akram Khan. ENB – namely its artistic director Tamara Rojo (who was recently appointed the artistic director of San Francisco Ballet) – took a big risk when it tapped Khan to commission a radical new version of Giselle. Indeed, why mess with perhaps the most perfect of Romantic ballets? Although the resulting work was and continues to be polarizing, Khan’s Giselle has nonetheless emerged as one of ENB’s signature productions. Now New York dance fans have the opportunity to see what all the fuss is all about.

Khan has drastically updated the piece, re-setting the ballet from an idyllic peasant village to the grim, trenchant environs of a shuttered factory, outside of which migrant workers – among them the love-struck titular character – are camped. Instead of a prince, Albrecht is now a member of the wealthy family that owns the factory, and Hilarion operates as a vaguely defined “shape-shifter” who dabbles in both the migrants’ and the land-owning family’s dealings. Set to Vincenzo Lamagna’s brooding, atmospheric score (as adapted from Adolphe Adam’s original composition), Khan has created a stylish and striking ballet for a company numbering upward of 50 dancers that is more poetically inclined than your traditional, literally-minded classical story ballet. Expect to feel more than to fully follow the narrative.

Act 1 is dominated by a pulsating communal folk dance vernacular for the migrants that wraps itself around the unfolding drama of Giselle’s seduction, love, betrayal, madness, and untimely death. In Act 2, the otherworldly wilis are absolutely terrifying and blood-thirsty, as if emerging straight from a horror flick (e.g., instead of enchanted branches, they now violently wield spear-like sticks). Only in this second half does Khan introduce pointe work, weaponizing it strictly for dramatic purposes. The ballet culminates in Giselle and Albrecht’s heartbreaking second act pas de deux that arrives at the same place as the underlying ballet but arising from a vastly different set of circumstances.

On opening night, the dancing was exceptional – Ms. Rojo made for a subtle, internally-focused Giselle, Isaac Hernández moved with an undeniably regal poise that ultimately leads to tragedy, Jeffrey Cirio danced with exciting brio as Hilarion, and Stina Quagebeur was downright frightening as the queen of the wilis. The ENB ensemble thoroughly embraced Khan’s atypical choreography, a mesmerizing combination of classical Indian kathak and contemporary dance. My only gripe was the lack of live musical accompaniment, which would have added further urgency and dimension to a staging that already speaks directly to the soul.

Best of all, however, are the powerful and memorable stage pictures that Khan has created, especially as shrouded in shadow or highlighted in stunning silhouette by lighting designer Mark Henderson. Not to be underestimated are the contributions of set and costume designer Tim Yip (who famously worked on the Ang Lee classic film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), whose stark scenic design – essentially an oppressive, monolithic wall (which occasionally spins, a la Robert Lepage’s “machine” for the Met’s controversial Ring Cycle) – potently alludes to the class separation that segregates the migrants from their landlords, as well as that mysterious membrane that emphatically splits life from what lies beyond.

 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

GISELLE
Dance
English National Ballet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
2 hours (including one intermission)
Through June 11