giselle – Page 2

Dancer Profile: Yuan Yuan Tan

June 1, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

Yuan Yuan Tan. Photograph by Erik Tomasson.

“To be perfect is impossible, but to be better is possible.” – Yuan Yuan Tan

The first chapter of Yuan Yuan Tan’s dance career literally hinged on a coin toss. The 11-year-old was among a small group of students selected for the prestigious Shanghai Dancing School–despite the fact that she had no dance experience at the time. Tan’s mother approved of the plan, but her father did not. He wanted her to be a doctor or engineer. Believers in fate, her parents decided to flip a coin. Dance won.

Tan was behind at the school and struggled at first, often just watching other students from the corner. But then a teacher recognized her natural talent and gave her private lessons. Soon enough, Tan excelled. She started entering and winning awards at ballet competitions, though she found the stress to be challenging. Yet, it was at competitions that San Francisco Ballet director Helgi Tomasson first spotted her. He invited her to join the company as a soloist. Two years later, she was promoted to principal- the youngest dancer to achieve this status in the history of the company.

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Dancer Profile: Isabella Boylston

April 13, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

Isabella Boylston. Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor. Used with Permission from American Ballet Theatre and Rosalie O'Connor. — Isabella Boylston. Photograph by Rosalie O’Connor. Used with Permission from American Ballet Theatre and Rosalie O’Connor.

“That’s the goal: To really have your expression manifest itself in your movement” –Isabella Boylston

Isabella Boylston began dancing at three and fell in love with ballet at eleven. At that age, her lessons featured live piano music and the opportunity to improvise with silk scarves at the end of class– both out-of-the-ordinary experiences for most ballet classes. Boylston went on to train at Colorado Ballet and the Harid Conservatory in Florida. In 2001, she won the gold medal at the Youth America Grand Prix.

At age 17, she attended the American Ballet Theatre’s summer intensive and was asked to join ABT’s studio company. However, her parents wanted her to complete her education first. Boylston said, “We got into a big fight because I wanted to come to New York and they wanted me to finish high school. Eventually we compromised and I got to come halfway through my senior year and I finished high school through correspondence.”

She found the transition from school to company a little jarring a first. In the studio company, she had to learn choreography much faster than she did in school. When she moved up to ABT’s main company, her struggle was to fit into the corps rather than stand out as an individual dancer. But, she rose to the occasion and was promoted to soloist in 2011 and principal dancer in 2014.

Boylston has danced many famous roles from the classical repertoire including Odette/Odile, but her favorite character is Giselle. She explains, “I really relate to Giselle. She’s impulsive and I feel like she’s more like my younger self than me now. I’ve experienced betrayal and it can be quite devastating, but it didn’t kill me. I think in the first act she’s really really lively and vital, experiencing life to the maximum. She opens herself up completely and that makes it all the more tragic when everything comes crashing down.” Boylston believes in ballet’s power to convey complex emotions and its relevancy. She says, “Ballet is such a unique art form. You can say things through dance that you could never express in words, and ballet has the ability to touch people on a deep, abstract level. In some ways, ballet is more valuable now than ever.”

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The Art Of Tragedy: Giselle

March 25, 2015 by 4dancers

Rachel Malehorn, Davit Hovhannisyan, Luz San Miguel — Davit Hovhannisyan and Luz San Miguel in the studio working on Michael Pink’s Giselle. Photo by Rachel Malehorn

by Rachel Malehorn

Dancers who join classical ballet companies will be a part of the centuries-old tradition of the full-length ballet. These evening-long works not only showcase the brilliance of classical ballet technique, but also set this dancing in a dramatic context with the goal of telling a story. Even an audience member who has no background or understanding of dance can get lost in these stories, and can leave the theater transformed. Dancers spend years of their lives endeavoring to perfect their technique, but sometimes their power as actors and actresses can be overlooked or de-emphasized. The stories our ballets tell are magical, fantastic, romantic, tragic, and sometimes difficult. Throughout my career as a dancer, I have come to love and look forward to the dual opportunity to dance with accuracy—and also to convey the drama of these stories.

As Milwaukee Ballet prepares for its upcoming performances, I have been meditating on two important themes: the process wherein dancers and choreographers communicate the story of a full-length ballet, and the importance of telling these stories—even if they don’t always have happy endings. Romeo & Juliet, Manon, Onegin, Madame Butterfly, and even La Bayadere are classic tales of thwarted love, in which the tragic heroines suffer death or disaster as the price of their love.

But perhaps the epitome of the tragic ballet is Giselle, created in Paris at the peak of Romanticism. In this story, Giselle, a peasant girl, is wooed by Albrecht, an aristocrat in peasant disguise, but is driven to madness and death by the discovery that Albrecht is already engaged to be married to Bathilde, also an aristocrat. When Albrecht visits Giselle’s grave to beg for forgiveness, the Wilis – ghosts of other girls who have died of broken hearts – compel Albrecht to dance himself to death, but Giselle (seemingly inexplicably, and most definitely tragically) saves Albrecht from death and forgives him for his betrayal. At its core, Giselle is chilling, heartbreaking, and achingly beautiful.

Michael Pink’s Giselle [Read more…]

DVD Review: Les Sylphides, Coppelia and Giselle

March 13, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

Part of the ICA Classics Legacy series, this triple bill of Les Sylphides, Coppelia, and Giselle is truly a treasure. It is a rare look at some of the mid-twentieth century’s greatest dance artists performing three of ballet’s most enduring works.

Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides, to the music of Chopin, was restored from a black-and-white 1956 BBC broadcast. It features Nadia Nerina and Philip Chatfield, with Rowena Jackson and Julia Farron in the Waltz and Prelude. On display here is absolute technical purity: subtle, precise bourrees for the women, effortlessly soaring grand jetes and impressive batterie for Chatfield. The mix of proscenium shots and moving cameras give a dreamy, dizzy air to the whole ballet—appropriate for one of the first abstract or plotless ballets. We float right along with Chatfield as the Poet through beautifully geometric formations of sylphs.

Margaret Dale’s 1957 adaptation of Charles Nuitter’s Coppelia is enchanting. It plays out convincingly enough to look more like a silent film than a ballet. Here Nadia Nerina is the star of the show; for one thing, she’s the only woman in this version dancing on pointe. Her costumes are also the only tutus; the rest of the characters are clad in heavier clothing and character boots. Nerina’s alignment and the precision of her incredibly streamlined legs lends easy sweetness to all her choreography, even the devilishly quick Scottish dance. The steps fall away to show her off as quite the comedienne. The overall liveliness and charm of the dancing and acting make the characters come vividly to life.

Last on the DVD is a restored 1962 recording of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in the Act 2 pas de deux from Giselle. It’s one of his earliest performances in the West, and one of the earliest in their long partnership. Nureyev’s skill as a partner and Fonteyn’s reserved technical style allow Giselle’s story to shine through, even in such a short excerpt. The wonder with which he cradles her makes her seem unreal. Throughout the duet, we see a Giselle who is deciding whether or not she can forgive the man who so carelessly broke her heart. By the end, Albrecht’s remorse merits her forgiveness so she may rest in peace. This excerpt is a really interesting study of variations in style and mechanics. For example, Nureyev’s high retire position when turning and the fluidity of his upper body are both a contrast and a complement to Fonteyn’s conservative but wholly expressive movement. The pas de deux is the traditional Perrot/Coralli version, but these two legends make it look like something all their own.

BBC/ICA Classics. Black and white, 100 minutes.

dancer doing arabesque — Emily Kate Long, Photo by Avory Pierce

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

DVD Review: An Evening With The Royal Ballet

February 1, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

Royal Opera House and Opus Arte’s An Evening with the Royal Ballet presents excerpts from nineteenth- and twentieth-century classics. Beloved works by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, Kenneth MacMillan, and Frederick Ashton will delight ballet lovers. The disc runs about 90 minutes, slightly shorter than a typical two-act evening of dance. Among the principal dancers featured are Leanne Benjamin, Darcey Bussell, Alina Cojocaru, Marianela Nunez, Tamara Rojo, Carlos Acosta, Johan Kobborg, and Steven McRae.

Part One opens with the imposing ballroom scene from MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, followed by Ashton’s Voices of Spring pas de deux—a true gem on this DVD. Benjamin and Acosta exude simple joy in the daring but never garish virtuoso duet. Also a treat are Nunez and Acosta’s sweetness and technical fireworks in Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardee. The closing selection of Part One alone, Cojocaru and Kobborg in a moving and sensitive pas de deux from Act II of Giselle, makes this disc one well worth having. That this particular pas de deux is excerpted as part of the full staging complete with willis, rather than a gala-type presentation, is of tremendous value.

Part Two includes an exemplary Rojo and Acosta in MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet balcony pas de deux, followed by selections from Sylvia, Swan Lake, Coppelia, and The Nutcracker. Here, in addition to polished, generous dancing by principals and corps alike, the lush sets and costumes of the Royal Ballet full-lengths are shown off to great advantage. Sylvia looks like a rococo oil painting, and the mighty pas de trios and glittering apotheosis of Swan Lake are an impressive close to this program.

An Evening with the Royal Ballet would make a rich addition to any dance lover’s video library.

Michael Pink’s Giselle [Read more…]

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