★★★★☆
When I walked into New Theatre Oxford to see the Russian State Ballet of Serbia perform Giselle, I thought I knew what I was going to get. It would be the usual, somewhat twisted, romantic psych thriller I had seen before, with country-style costumes in earth tones to accompany the extreme display of emotion that is essential to the plot. What I found instead was something more like the Disneyfied version of a Grimm Brothers tale, and I half anticipated that Giselle would somehow return from the dead to marry a remorseful Count Albrecht at the end.
While the dancing was phenomenal and the lifts were sharp and snappy, I was completely thrown by the costume choices. All of the peasant girls who danced in the first act had tutus of nearly neon shades of yellow and orange, with some also in what looked like lime green silk shower caps. Their costumes then clashed perfectly with that of Giselle, danced by Ekaterina Bulgutova, who looked more like Dorothy than a nineteenth century peasant girl. The whole first act seemed as if it were about to cross over into the land of Oz.
The costumes may have been functioning as an overly explicit form of signposting, with the Countess who steals the Count away from Giselle wearing a jet black gown punctuated in blood-red ribbon that weaved in and out of her bodice through metal-rimmed openings in a strange nod to retro punk fashion. That the two male leads, Georgiy Bolsunovskiy as Hans the forester and Yury Kudryavstev as Count Albrecht, were plainly dressed was an unexpected twist. I would have at least liked to see commitment to the colorful eccentrism of the costumes if it were to appear at all.
That said, Bolsunovskiy and Kudryavstev also performed well, though I found that the former overshadowed the latter in emotion. The forester, who is typically presented as a rather hateful figure who tries to prevent Giselle from following her heart, was perhaps the redeeming grace of the show. It may have been an accident of casting, but the forester was so likable here that I almost felt indignant that he was not the one to have the final dance with her ghost.
Though it probably sounds by this point as if I did not enjoy the ballet, I thoroughly did, and it made a miraculous comeback in the second act. The costumes of the Wilis were on point (no pun intended) and looked like something out of a Vera Wang show. The choreography was fresh but still intelligible within the scope of the plot, and the music was equal parts celebratory and mournful. The Queen of the Wilis, danced by Elena Pogorelaya, was perfectly terrifying.
My main wish for the show is only that the strange costuming had not disrupted the intensity of the so-called “mad” scene, in which Giselle threatens to kill herself after realizing the Count is engaged to the Countess but dies of a broken heart before she ever gets the chance. Bulgutova danced her part here beautifully, but I found myself a bit thrown as I watched what looked like an attempted suicide in the land of the munchkins.
Believe it or not, the skill of the dancers in my mind won out in the end, and I give Giselle four stars.
