Dance Review: Ballet Cymru’s Giselle

Molly Stubbs 

I’ve somewhat dreaded the day I’d have to review a ballet. Aside from six months of classes in my childhood that left me with a vague knowledge of pliés and a TikTok algorithm that won’t stop showing me that one Esmerelda tambourine variation, I’m not exactly clued up on the form — even if I do absolutely adore it. 

But, after being swept away by the magic of Ballet Cymru’s Giselle, which I saw at Newport’s Riverfront Theatre on Friday 16 May, I’ve realised you don’t have to know everything about ballet to appreciate its undeniable beauty. This is especially true when the dancers are as spectacular as those of Ballet Cymru. Although you might have to forgive the likely inaccurate terminology I’ll employ later on in this review.

I’m hoping that, unlike Swan Lake and the Nutcracker, Giselle’s story isn’t exactly common knowledge. I certainly didn’t have the faintest clue about what was going to unfold on stage as I sat down, and I chose to keep it that way to see if I could discern the narrative, as is expected in ballet, from the movement. 

Loveable

Here’s what I deduced: Giselle is a slightly strange but loveable girl who likes to hang around with her friends in a forest. She’s desperately in love with a very well-dressed man, but is also being pursued by another fella who, beset with jealously, goes hunting for a way to break Giselle and his rival up. He finds that Giselle’s preferred beau…is married! Gasp. The two men fight and Giselle, in attempting to break them up, gets clonked on the head so hard she dies. 

In the second act, Giselle is making the best of the afterlife with a gaggle of spirits, while the well-dressed man is so distraught he spends his time weeping over her grave. He begs the spirits to take him too, but Giselle loves him so much she helps him heal the heartbreak and carry on with life. Everyone lives happily ever after, except Giselle, who is dead. 

Lo and behold, I managed to get the story more or less spot on. This is due less to my own (lack of) intelligence than to the wonderfully emotive performance from the dancers, and immersive set, costume, and projection design by Darius James OBE.

From now on, though, let’s refer to the married man as Albrecht (who’s well-dressed because he’s a Duke), the jealous love rival as Hilarion, and the queen of the spirits as Myrtha. Oh, and Giselle dies of a broken heart, not blunt force trauma.

Prowess

Don’t let the relatively simple story fool you, the level of prowess required to bring Giselle to life is incredible. Isobel Holland’s portrayal of the leading lady, though delicate, brings a huge presence to stage through sublime sweeping motions. Jacob Hornsey’s Albrecht is so full of anguish in the second act I did start to forgive him for breaking Giselle’s heart, and James Knott’s Hilarion is so sharp and precise he cut straight through the company dancers’ delightfully elegant haze.  

Jakob Myers, who plays one of Giselle’s friends in the first act, switches seamlessly to the role of Myrtha, taking over the show both technically and with magnetic presence. But it’s Mika George-Evans, Giselle’s friend, and Kamal Singh, Albrecht’s friend, who have such unique and powerful signatures the applause I gave them was completely involuntary.

All the Ballet Cymru dancers seem to have been encouraged by the choreographers, Darius James OBE and Amy Doughty, to preserve their personal styles to a somewhat unusual extent.

It goes without saying that their synchronisation was always en pointe, pun very much intended, but the range of approaches on stage created a harmony and realism I feel some other companies lack. They never sacrificed extension or musicality for the other, bringing them together in perfect balance with the narrative.

Rare is it that I feel the need to praise every single performer in a production, but to get such variety in unanimity could happen nowhere else other than a ballet, and perhaps only with Ballet Cymru.

Haunting

Also deserving of a mention here is lighting designer Chris Illingworth, who transformed the stage during the second act in a grand complement to the haunting performance. The rapid slide from sunshine in the countryside to a deserted graveyard is, of course, a symptom of the story. But the production team did a commendable job creating those spaces for the dancers to fully inhabit.

Here the performers truly became one in a mist of smoke and organza, the manèges (or perhaps motifs?) as hypnotic as heartbeats. They moved as one eerie pulse, restrained, ghostly, almost ritualistic, and played a perfect contrast to Albrecht’s emotional chaos.

Giselle’s story, at least in the version I saw, appears to enact this juxtaposition between light and dark quite often, even in the fluidity of individual variations. A romantic pas de deux became a heated pas de trois, divertissements always carried emotional weight even when dense with technicality, and the coda was subtle yet enacted a surprising emotional reckoning.

Journey

Just as I’m throwing terminology at you for fun, we’re coming to the end. Probably best, as I’m wont to make a fool of myself the longer I’m allowed to talk.

One thing I can say with certainty, however, is that the journey Giselle will take you on is worth both your time and money, even if, like me, you just stare open mouthed in amazement and admiration the whole time.

And as if the atmosphere wasn’t heady enough inside the theatre, Ballet Cymru will be staging two outdoor performances of Giselle, the first at the National Trust Dyffryn Gardens on the 3, 4, and 5 July, and another at the National Trust Tredegar House & Gardens in Newport on the 10, 11, and 12 July. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.