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This Giselle is not one of those shallow revisitations aimed solely at shocking traditionalist old fogeys, though. This quirkily provocative one-acter of pure dance-theatre is an abrasive satire on moral and social beliefs in rural Ireland which benefits from a deeply considered analysis of the 1841 ballet narrative. The script is packed with the F-word, and intercourse — both hetero- and homosexual — is graphically depicted on stage. Yet the action never slips into gratuitous vulgarity. On the contrary, the strong lines and images throughout add to the dramatic tension of the whole. And, in several instances, they mix fluidly with the satire mentioned above, thus generating bitterly comic situations.
Giselle is not an easy classic to tackle, given the dauntingly overwhelming historical, cultural and artistic baggage it comes with, including Mats Ek’s celebrated 1982 revision. Still, Keegan-Dolan’s version stands out for its often inventively varied approach to the old narrative, even though there is an abundance of ideas that occasionally thwart what would otherwise be a much more powerfully linear reinterpretation of the classic. The use of a number of sub- and meta-stories, for instance, hinders the developing tragedy, as in the case of the unnecessarily reiterated ‘Cinderella’ treatment the female protagonist receives from a bullying local nurse and her ‘fat’ daughter. However, such flaws are counterbalanced by effective theatrical and choreographic ideas. The fact that all female parts except that of the heroine are portrayed by men adds greatly to the intentionally grotesque and dark dimension of the action. And the line-dancing classes, during which the real, though well-hidden, nature of each villager comes out fully, are truly ingenious and well-constructed post-modern transpositions of the silly waltzes of the classic version.
The images that really stick in one’s memory, however, are those of the final part — the equivalent of the balletic supernatural second act. The ghosts of the dead jilted girls are presented as hungry zombies emerging from their graves in the best horror-movie tradition and amid visually striking clouds of white dust. They do not dance mortals to death; they eat them instead — an idea that Keegan-Dolan had also used effectively in his splendid ‘Giselle from Hell’ ballet for the recent production of Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House. What makes these modern-day equivalents of the Romantic Wilis particularly fascinating is their interaction with ropes hanging from above, which allow them to fly but never to fly away, thus stressing their fate as doomed, restless souls. It is thus a pity that the duet between the sorrowful Albrecht and the ghost of Giselle does not have, choreographically speaking, the same incisiveness and inventiveness as other ideas.
The whole action is set to Philip Feeney’s hauntingly incisive score. Yet at the end of the performance, when the last bars of Adolphe Adam’s 1841 ballet music are used to accompany the final striking image of an overjoyed, child-like Giselle jumping up and down from and into her grave, a totally unexpected range of emotions overcomes the viewers, prompting a well-deserved ovation for the uniquely multitalented artists of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre.
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Also by Giannandrea Poesio
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