Veteran’s ‘Giselle,’ Full of Spontaneity, and No Apologies

<First published on line in the New York Times, 2007>

NEW HAVEN, June 15 — While glasnost was a buzzword, no ballerina exemplified it better than Nina Ananiashvili. When, after a long hiatus, the Bolshoi began again to tour Britain and America in 1986-7, she was its youngest star, marvelously fresh in the full-length “Raymonda” and “Giselle.” She soon began interleaving her Bolshoi career with engagements in the West. She has danced Balanchine with New York City Ballet, Ashton and MacMillan with the Royal Ballet of London, Bournonville with the Royal Danish Ballet, Petipa with the Kirov Ballet: That is, she, like no one else, has gone to all the main choreographic centers of ballet classicism to dance their home choreography, and she remains too a principal guest artist with American Ballet Theater. (She dances “Swan Lake” there on June 28.)

As that “-ashvili” end to her name suggests, this international star comes from Georgia, and her main focus today is as artistic director and prima ballerina of the State Ballet of the Republic of Georgia. That company is now touring America with a range of repertory ancient and modern.

As I watched Ms. Ananiashvili dance Giselle with her Georgian troupe at the Shubert Theater here on Friday, as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas (through June 23), I kept having to remind myself that it had been 21 years since I saw her dance her first Western performance of the role, in Paris with the Bolshoi. She was then the company’s freshest Giselle, the one most spontaneously caught up in the old ballet’s moment-by-moment drama.

She is just as fresh now. The eyes are still doelike, the lines of the legs and arms have the same lovely, calm flow, the responsiveness to the other characters onstage is still touching and vulnerable, and her timing and phrasing remain wonderfully direct.

The Georgian “Giselle” production was mounted last year by her former Bolshoi colleague Alexei Fadeyechev. The company claims that the sets and costumes, by Viacheslav Okunev, are based on Léon Bakst’s designs for the Diaghilev production. Unfortunately the Diaghilev version, in 1910, was designed not by Bakst but by Alexandre Benois; Mr. Okunev’s work, slightly cramped on the Shubert stage, bears some cartoonish resemblance to illustrations of the 1910 sets, without any of the painterly detail that makes them look as if they must have been definitive.

The choreographic text for the ballet, attributed as usual to Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa (all 19th-century choreographers), is in most respects a faithful rendition, though the main Act 1 peasant divertissement done as a pas de six rather than de deux is the arrangement of some post-Petipa figure. The production also introduced a character new in my experience of “Giselle”: a hired peasant woman who minds Albrecht’s cottage and cloak for him: It’s surprising how effectively this works.

The ballet, regrettably, was performed at the Shubert, where the orchestra pit is small, to a Bolshoi recording of the Adolphe Adam score (with additions by Léon Minkus and others, uncredited as usual). The stereo effect was such that on one side of the theater some aspects of the score were virtually inaudible.

The Georgians’ standard of dancing is high, that of acting less so. The male peasant dancers in particular seem determined to demonstrate their aristocratic refinement, with ultranoble head positions and upper body glamour; the walk-on characters in the hunting party behave like waxworks. Why does Ms. Ananiashvili, playing Giselle with such spontaneity herself, tolerate such acting-by-numbers in those about her? During her Mad Scene, you could see just how everybody had been told what to do when.

These weaknesses, though they should be attended to, matter less than you might suppose, especially during Act 2, in which the drama is told almost all in dance terms. The Georgians dance with the same musical directness and springlike charm as Ms. Ananiashvili. The style is clean, the female corps de ballet uniformly engaged.

Albrecht is played by another Bolshoi principal, Sergei Filin, appealingly youthful in manner, striking in the rapidly beaten jumps that are this role’s ardent, urgent climax.

Although “Giselle’s” history in Georgia goes back to the 1940s, it’s evident that most of this cast is fairly new to it. The production’s pleasure is simply that this is “Giselle” itself, neither spoiled by pretentious reinterpretation nor made stale by mannerism, and with just the right romantic overlay to the ballet’s classicism. This company’s repertory, as will be shown on the next legs of this tour, includes ballets by Balanchine (Georgian by blood) and Western-born choreographers alive and dead; I look forward to further acquaintance.

@New York Times, 2007