Atlanta Ballet performed its Giselle, with choreography by Artistic Director Gennadi Nedvigin based on the original, for Valentine’s Day weekend. I caught the Saturday matinee, led by Airi Igarashi as Giselle and Angel Ramirez as Albrecht.
Set in a village in rural Germany, Giselle is the story of a young girl with a weak heart who loves to dance. When a young count, Albrecht, arrives in the village disguised as a peasant, he and Giselle fall in love. But unbeknownst to her, he is betrothed to the cold and stately Bathilde, here played convincingly by Georgie Grace Butler. When rival suitor Hilarion, a fierce Anderson Souza, reveals Albrecht’s secret to Giselle and her mother, Giselle goes mad and dies of a broken heart. This sets up a glorious Act 2 in the forest, where the Wilis, ghosts of maidens who were jilted before their wedding days, exact their vengeance on men by making them dance to their deaths. The Wilis are haunting and beautiful, but they are also trapped in a limbo where they cannot rest. Giselle encounters these spectres after her death, but she ultimately convinces the Wilis to spare Albrecht.
Atlanta Ballet is a company that is evolving at speed. An on-stage announcement before the performance celebrated the formation of a new group of donors, meant to aid Nedvigin in “realizing his vision of a world-class ballet company in Atlanta.” This performance showed many signs of progress.
Igarashi and Ramirez are tremendous dancers, each with world-class talents. Igarashi has a wonderful balance of sprightliness and length, with natural ballon, that makes her very well-suited to the role of Giselle. She was bright and gentle, graciously reassuring others when she needed to pause for her heart to settle. In the Act 1 variation, Igarashi’s pirouettes en attitude were a highlight – crisp, fast, stylish in line – and she was steady and elegant in the difficult passage of hops en pointe across the stage.
Act 1 culminates in Giselle’s famous mad scene, a demanding and dramatic task for any ballerina. Igarashi handled it admirably, though there were moments where I wondered if she could project just a bit more in her acting. Where she excelled in the mad scene was in the sporadic, wilting passages of dance that mimic the steps Giselle and Albrecht shared before his true identity was revealed. In Act 2 she danced with lovely abandon and, in turn, a quiet resoluteness when she saves Albrecht from the Wilis.
Ramirez, who was recently named one of Dance Magazine’s 2026 ‘25 to Watch’, dances with generosity and princely charm. In Act 1, his Albrecht was intriguingly earnest, despite his great lie. Where some Albrechts can be calculating or deceptive, Ramirez seemed swept away in the romance – just as much as Giselle. When he picked off an extra flower petal to manipulate the loves-me-loves-me-not game, it read as an innocent flight of fancy, rather than a trick. It was easy to forget he was not who he said he was.
Igarashi and Ramirez also make a very good pair, with easy chemistry and complementary styles. His partnering was excellent. In the Act 2 pas de deux, the lifts were seamless.
In contrast to Ramirez’s Albrecht, Souza as Hilarion was the villain of this production. Passionate and scorned, he acts in the first act as if entitled to Giselle’s attention. His dramatic reveal of Albrecht’s identity read as bitter and opportunistic, spoiling an unlikely love story. When the Wilis, led by a steely and commanding Brooke Gilliam as Myrtha danced a flailing Souza to his death in Act 2, it felt deserved.
Yet Giselle rises or falls with the quality of the corps. Atlanta Ballet is still a relatively small company for a ballet of this scale (its roster boasts around 40 dancers), so this production used a dozen or so dancers from Atlanta Ballet 2 to fill out the cast. While there were a few moments of unevenness in Act 1, particularly in some of the trickier male corps parts, not so in Act 2. The Wilis are the true stars of Giselle, and these Wilis – many of whom were Atlanta Ballet 2 dancers – were excellent. The slow, majestic shunts in arabesque for the corps, where lines of Wilis fill the stage at the height of their powers, were pristinely executed. It was a great showing of the health of this growing company.
