LONDON — It’s a roll of the dice. Ballet audiences love full-length narrative works, but unlike opera, enduring storytelling doesn’t make a long list. Ballet directors need more, but tremble at the investment of money and time they need, knowing that the chances of long-term success, both financial and critical, are slim.
When Tamara Rojo, the director of English National Ballet, asked Akram Khan to recreate the much-loved 19th-century classic ‘Giselle’, there was a lot at stake. A Spanish-born ballerina, Rojo had only been in her job as Artistic Director of the English National Ballet for two years, trying to establish an identity for the group that would distinguish it from the larger, better-funded Royal Ballet, where she played a principal dancer. Khan, a British dance maker of Bengali descent, who had become famous in Britain for a fusion of classical Indian kathak and contemporary dance, had little interest in ballet and had never made a full-length work.
“There was about a one in a million chance this would work,” Khan said.
But it did. Opening Wednesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (and running through Saturday), ‘Giselle’ was an instant hit when the English National Ballet performed it at the Manchester International Festival in 2016. In Khan’s version, Giselle is one of the migrating workers who have set up camp behind the high walls of a shuttered garment factory where they had worked. Albrecht is a wealthy factory owner who pretends to be a migrant; necessary deception, betrayal and death follow. (The wilis — ghosts of dead women, dumped before reaching the altar — remain the wilis, albeit with more horror movie undertones.)
In a telephone interview, David Binder, Artistic Director of the BAM, said: “Akram transforms the work into something totally new, that still speaks to our times and the original, kind of like the recent production we had of ‘Cyrano.’”
He added: “If you come up with expectations about a traditional ‘Giselle’, you’ll have a fantastic evening; if you don’t know ‘Giselle’ at all, have a fantastic evening.”
Since its premiere, the piece—scored by Vincenzo Lamagna and designed by Tim Yip—has traveled internationally, making the company an agile vehicle for adventurous contemporary ballet and cementing Rojo’s reputation for risky vision and drive. (She will succeed Helgi Tomasson as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Ballet at the end of the year.)
Rojo, 48, will twice dance the part of Giselle at the Brooklyn Academy – one of the last times she’ll perform, before stepping out with one last “Giselle” in Paris in October.
In a video call, Rojo and Khan discussed why “Giselle” was a particularly relevant work for English National Ballet, the pain of pointe work and the ballet’s impact on their careers. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Why an adaptation of ‘Giselle’, one of the few 19th-century ballets that still feels perfect?
TAMARA ROJO “Giselle” is a ballet of special relevance to English National Ballet, as the company was founded in 1950 by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, who were famous for their collaboration in that work.
I had seen the Björk movie ‘Dancer in the Dark’ and felt it was Giselle’s story in a contemporary context. Akram’s first piece for the company, “Dust,” was a transformation for us, and I knew he had an amazing capacity for storytelling and an abstract, spiritual side. I really thought he was the choreographer who could do it.
Akram, you said you had seen very little ballet at the time. How did you approach “Giselle”?
AKRAM KHAN It’s not just about entering a world – it’s about who is holding your hand, and Tamara did. She would explain to me, as an embodied tourist guide, all the details of the story. It became clear to me that the second half was my starting point, perhaps because I invest a lot of curiosity in the intangibles that we can’t talk about, when the body can. But I didn’t know what to do with the pointe.
Then Tamara explained to me the history of pointe work, and I realized it had made ghosts and ghosts more believable on stage. That was probably the most exciting part of the process for me. I was totally naive – I had no idea it was so hard, torturous really, to be on pointe all the time, and I would keep the women on their toes while I thought about things. When someone started to cry, Tamara had to explain it to me. I still feel bad.
In your “Giselle”, the original villagers become migrant workers. Want to make a political point?
KHAN The migrant crisis was huge for me. I remember being in a pub and seeing television footage of that little boy washing up on the shore of a Greek island. In fact, the migrant crisis had only just begun; look what is happening to Ukraine now. In both the original version of ‘Giselle’ and this one, it is the tension between the powerful and the powerless that drives the story.
What impact did the success of ballet have on your careers?
ROJO It was transformative for English National Ballet. There are sometimes works that are inevitably associated with one company, such as Pina Bausch’ Spring Festival and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. “Giselle” helped me define the company’s identity, and what I thought it could be.
When I announced that I would be commissioning Akram to do “Giselle”, I got a lot of criticism from the ballet world; that I would ruin the technique of the dancers, that I was not interested in classical dance. But afterwards, people understood that it broadened their vocabulary, their strength, their knowledge. And the success of the ballet gave me the confidence of my board and supporters, and the energy and strength to continue on a risky path.
KHAN Working with English National Ballet reminded me of the importance of structure, of discipline, of technique. I felt the history of the dancers, the beauty and the power of the corps de ballet. There is something very powerful about that idea of being one entity, committed to a common goal.
I feel like we’ve kind of lost that in contemporary dance, at least in Europe. New voices and talent are important, but we need respect for knowledge, wisdom and tradition. If you want to know who and where you are, you have to look to the past.
Story ballets look like more popular than ever† Why do you think that is?
ROJO By telling each other stories, we create society, we recognize each other, we learn life and moral lessons. Dance has the great advantage of being a language that anyone can understand, and movement can say things that words cannot.
Of course there is fashion; right now we have a wave of new narrative ballets and maybe a wave of abstract ballets will follow. But people find meaning in everything, and I don’t think storytelling will disappear in dance.
