This emotional performance of Giselle was all the more remarkable for being presented by the newly-minted United Ukrainian Ballet, a company that was not even a figment of anyone’s imagination six months ago. The Dutch Centre for Ukrainian Dancers opened in The Hague on 31st May and is now the home for over 60 refugee artists from that war-torn country. Dancers, technicians and creatives from companies all over Ukraine have assembled under the artistic leadership of Igone de Jongh and a new company has been born.
Ballet companies around the world carefully build their ensembles through thousands of auditions over many years, with directors choosing new recruits to fit into their jigsaw of repertoire requirements. In the case of the UUB, the doors have been opened to any dancer escaping the war with the added complication that men under the age of 60 will have required special permission to leave the country. Many decided to stay and fight and with bitter and angry sadness, we already know that two brave men (Artyom Datsishin and, only two days ago, Oleksandr Shapoval), leading dancers at the National Ballet in Kyiv, have died in the conflict. It was hard to watch this ballet about love, betrayal and loss without thinking of their own ultimate sacrifice and I feel sure that there were tears in the eyes of their former colleagues on stage.
In this context it is impossible not to marvel at the ingenuity and achievement in putting this scratch company together and delivering a performance exemplified by pride, passion and a little help from their friends: sets and costumes were borrowed from Birmingham Royal Ballet, a makeshift mix of scenery for Giselle and The Dream. Dancing this new-old interpretation by Alexei Ratmansky was no less than a triumph for the United Ukrainian Nation.
Ratmansky’s choreography scrapes away the varnish of renovations in the long line of productions that have kept the legend of Giselle alive for so many decades since its 1841 premiere. Together with his wife Tatiana, Ratmansky learned the skill of Stepanov notations to get back to original and early ideas (particularly the detailed records of a choreographer named Henri Justamant from around 1860) to create a ballet much closer to the original concept than many of the other productions seen around the world today. To my mind, these new-old alterations work very well. I felt that particularly with the treatment of the two people impacted by the love between Giselle and Albert (a name preferred here to the more usual form of Albrecht). The modernised readings of the roles of Hilarion and Bathilde are reversed. Usually, one feels sympathy for Hilarion: he has done nothing wrong and his intended marriage to the most beautiful girl in the village has been usurped by this interloper (Albrecht, disguised as the commoner, Loys) and so that we don’t feel the hero to be a cad, his betrothed, Bathilde, is seen as a distant and cold aristo. Faced with this future, why wouldn't he fall for the warm-hearted Giselle? But in Ratmansky’s reading, Hilarion is a cunning brute (in one key moment he makes to strike Giselle and that tells us all we need to know) and Bathilde is an understanding woman who returns at the finale to comfort and reclaim her man. The use of mime throughout was prolific; Ratmansky has reinstated two unfamiliar passages of music, including a “new” dance for the Wilis; and instead of being returned to a cold grave, Giselle is laid to rest amongst the flowers on a grassy knoll, her body gradually sinking into the earth.
Regrettably, Katja Khaniukova was unable to dance but the Ukrainian principal from American Ballet Theatre, Christine Shevchenko was a stellar replacement in the title role, making it her own in a carefully nuanced interpretation across every scene. She was partnered by Oleksii Tiutiunyk (principal-in-exile from the National Ballet of Ukraine) as Albert. His expressiveness was commanding – I doubt that I have seen an Albrecht in such mortal fear of the Wilis. Sergei Kliachin was an Hilarion in the mould of Disney’s Gaston (Beauty and the Beast) and Elizaveta Gogidze was an outstanding Myrtha, Queen of an excellent host of well-behaved Wilis. Given the short time that the corps de ballet has had to work together, they were superb. The charismatic conductor, Viktor Oliynik directed the English National Opera Orchestra with the verve and passion that the evening deserved.
The performance was prefaced by a moving rendition of Britten’s arrangement of the British National Anthem (sung by the ENO Chorus) and it ended in an emotional and uplifting performance of the Ukrainian Anthem at the curtain call. This was a splendid evening of ballet and humanity at its best, but also highlighting the shameless devastation wrought by the worst of deluded human ambition.
