Tokyo Ballet makes Australian debut with dark classic

When the curtain rises on act two of Giselle, the heroine is already dead. This is not much of a spoiler: Giselle is one of the oldest ballets in the world that is still regularly performed. If you have even a glancing interest in the art form, you probably know the basics of the tale – about an artless young village girl who loves too much and suffers dearly for it, who dies of a broken heart, and rises again as a nocturnal spirit.

The first act is a tragic little melodrama; the second is spellbinding and unearthly. When Giselle’s erstwhile lover Albrecht goes to the forest to mourn her, he is drawn into the supernatural world of the Wilis, the ethereal spirits who rise after the midnight hour to dance feckless young men to death, and to whose ranks Giselle now belongs. In some versions of the ballet, Albrecht dies in the forest; in most, he survives due to Giselle’s intervention and the break of dawn which sends the spirits back to their graves. Either way, the story is a sorrowful one: Albrecht loses Giselle forever.

A new production, performed by The Tokyo Ballet and premiering this week at the State Theatre for a Melbourne-only season, offers audiences the opportunity to see a version of this classic of Romanticism rarely staged in Australia. It’s sometimes called the “Moscow version” because of its association with the Bolshoi Ballet, which first performed it in 1944. Choreographed by Leonid Lavrovsky, this reinterpretation of the story hinges on drawing out the human heart of the work.

For Yukari Saito, artistic director of The Tokyo Ballet, Lavrovsky’s interpretation of Giselle is the canonical one. Speaking via translator Yuko Ebihara, she says that audiences will have an entirely different experience of the ballet depending on which version of the cast they see. “The individuality of the performers is given the utmost importance, allowing them to express themselves as they see fit,” she says.

This extends beyond the principal characters to the corps de ballet as well. “If there are 22 corps de ballet members, each individual must be alive and breathing.”

For Giselle especially, this is unusual. The second act is renowned for its corps of unearthly, white-clad spirits who are very beautiful, very remote, and very precise in their formations – the emphasis is on the ensemble, rather than the individual.

“While the dancers need to be in perfect unison, they must also bring the audience into that world with the energy they emit individually,” explains Saito. “It’s not enough to be merely beautiful; one must express the beauty that lies within an immense sense of terror.”

The company landed in Australia over the weekend, with the Tokyo-based dancers joining their Australian counterparts in the studios from 10am on Monday. While Giselle will be performed by dancers from The Tokyo Ballet, their visit provides an opportunity for dancers in the two companies to learn from one another and work together in different ways. Throughout the week, they will take classes together. They will watch each other rehearse and perform. Though they may not speak a common language, they will understand each other. As Saito puts it, “The techniques we are involved in are a language without words.”