Hints and tips:
...A childhood birthday trip to the Palais Garnier, where he saw Lycette Darsonval and Serge Lifar dance Giselle, sealed his desire to dance....
...There are regular glimpses of other ballets — Anastasia act one, Giselle’s mad scene — and Bourne borrows freely from Petipa’s Beauty, quoting hands and fingers in the fairy variations and the linked-arm...
...Its UK premiere came six years later when Ballet British Columbia brought it to Sadler’s Wells, where its crepuscular black-on-black styling and anguished plastic groupings looked right at home....
...The religious Madame de Rênal (Amandine Albisson), who prays even mid-pas de deux, appears to Julien as a Giselle-like vision when he is exiled to a seminary....
...Tom Scutt’s designs dot the perimeter of the space with black clay tablets punctuated by tree stumps and an upstage sarcophagus....
...Crisp became close friends with the critic Mary Clarke when the publishers Adam and Charles Black brought them together to co-write Ballet: An Illustrated History (1973)....
...Sylvie Guillem also appears, resting backstage dressed as Giselle, alongside Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen in turquoise feathers, and Diana, Princess of Wales meeting Swan Lake dancers at the Royal Albert...
...Costumes too came in for a roasting: he expressed tender sympathy for a dancer who had been adorned with “a headdress like a suicidal meringue”; in a Giselle of 2000, “someone has been doling out moustaches...
...Meanwhile YouTube remains a treasure chest of vintage performances — Markova’s Giselle for the BBC anyone?...
...Akram Khan’s Giselle, Crystal Pite’s tremendous Flight Pattern and Rambert’s Aisha and Abhaya have all wrestled with the subject....
...It began with Ross Freddie Ray’s Fraudulent Smile, which features two women, dressed Schiele-style in black stockings and vintage undies, who are variously splayed and abused by six men in dark trousers...
...Arresting examples include Akram Khan’s Giselle and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern, which returns to the Royal Ballet in London later this season....
...Goddard has a flair for black comedy (he was electrifying in Mark Bruce’s Dracula) and Osipova is a dance actress who contains multitudes: a firecracker Kitri in Don Quixote, a heart-rending Giselle....
...With artistic decisions things are not black and white. Some people don’t understand what I am trying to do, then I explain, we are just different people.”...
...Set against stygian black, the ballet — like its score — tails off. Worse follows....
...She was a Giselle for these times. To May 31, abt.org...
...Lucy Guerin’s 2013 Black Box was faithful to its title, with a black box lifted and lowered on stage to reveal groups of dancers, but offered only monotonous choreography....
...Anton Dolin’s cloak for Giselle Act Two was a little something by Balmain but no one ever asked Balmain to make a dance piece....
...Once she has duetted him to death, this newly empowered Giselle can enjoy a final, ecstatic dance on his grave. eno.org...
...The downbeat finale of this starry but underwhelming evening sees Yanowsky receding upstage, Giselle-style, while Acosta broods on a stool....
...There was a man in his sixties in Chinese-looking loose black clothing that smacked of Chairman Mao....
...The man-eating Myrta, queen of the Wilis, does not simply introduce herself to us in her initial solo, she meticulously prepares the space for her nefarious purposes, marking the perimeter with black-magic...
...At their best, common schooling and strength yield impressive results, as was evident in the corps de ballet Wilis during the second act of Giselle....
...Britten’s bewitchingly small instrumental ensemble was placed on a platform high above a severe, all-black set....
...The supporting cast, led by Giselle Allen as Ellen Orford and David Kempster as Balstrode, was well enough chosen to represent the colourful characters of the Borough....
International Edition