Giselle
1987 / 89'Director:
Mans Reutersward
Choreographer:
Mats Ek
Music by:
Adolphe Adam
Performers:
Ana Laguna, Luc Boouy,
The Gullberg Ballet
Production:
Sveriges Television AB
SwedenThe son of Anders Ek - Ingmar Bergman's favourite actor - and Brigit Cullberg - a dancer and choreographer, the founder of the Cullberg ballets - Ìats Ek had worked for the theatre for ten years before he decided to turn his attentions to dance, first as a dancer and then as a choreographer. Even in his early choreographies, his individuality is apparent. He re-reads the old myths of classical and romantic ballet, and turns them upside down in the process. In this re-evaluation, he uses psychoanalytic terms, an utterly personal sense of the comic and tragic, and a kinesic vocabulary that turns classical movement "inside out." Movement and gesture are charged with emotion and take on new dimensions through the incorporation to the choreography of movements that betray the sexuality of the characters.
The first act of the old romantic story of Giselle is narrated with very few interventions. There is little here to differentiate the treatment from a classical performance: Giselle, a vivacious girl in love with life and freedom, feels squandered in her relation with the shepherd Ilarion, yet has no choice. She dreams of love, when one day she meets the Prince, who is out hunting. She falls in love with him, they exchange vows of eternal love, and he promises to marry her. When the courtiers come to meet her, his mother treats her like a cute little creature that stands no chance of getting married to her son. When she insults her even more deeply, and the prince is confronted with choosing between her and the court, he chooses the court. Betrayed, the Giselle of the romantic version loses her wit and dies. In the second act, the Prince meets Giselle's spirit near a fountain, along with the spirits of other girls who have died from heartbreak and the fairy who takes care of them. Having regretted what he has done, he tries to bring Giselle back to life - but it is too late: She now belongs to the world of spirits for ever.
In Mats Ek's version, the first act concludes with the fit of lunacy. So the second one takes place in an institute for deranged girls. The spirits - sulphides have been replaced by the inmates of a mental hospital, the fairy by a strict hospital nurse-nun, and the set depicts two-dimensional floating female limbs. The Prince visits her, he tries to come near her and share her experiences and her world - but it is all in vain. The deranged girls have their own code and are in another world. Giselle is lost in her own world for ever. The Prince also ends up deranged.
One of the most powerful, visually and choreographically, dance performances of the nineties, Giselle is one of Mats Ek's most representative productions - a mixture of narrative neo-classical dance and a most striking expressionist choreography, in the vein of the German expressionists of the thirties.
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