Giselle (27/05/11, The Grand, Leeds)

We had never seen a 'proper' ballet before, so we picked Giselle. Previously we'd seen a ballet/dance version of Dracula at the West Yorkshire Playhouse that didn't blow me away, and a modern dance interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Edinburgh, which was intriguing and hot. Giselle conforms more to what I think a ballet is. The closest I've come to such previously would be watching the excellent Black Swan, and the musical Billy Elliott.

Coming off a week of a head cold and sat in an over-warm theatre (the ice cream seller told me that the heat's turned up for the benefit of the dancers) meant that I found my lids drooping on occasion during the first act and so I may not have been in the best condition for judging what I saw. However, I have determined that I don't think ballet is for me. It feels like ballet is a world that you really have to know, that isn't accessible to people like me who dip in with no background knowledge. If I hadn't read the act synopses in the programme beforehand I would not have been able to follow all that was going on, particularly in the second act. 

I think I need my drama and plot articulating, either through lines of dialogue or song lyrics, as I find it hard to interpret the mime of ballet. Oh it all looked very pretty and the dancing appeared excellent (though I have no frame of reference to say otherwise) but it all felt a bit like showing off. I thought well fair enough you can dance beautifully, but so what, what does that do to further to story? My emotions weren't stirred as I was either trying to figure out who was who and what they were doing or I was ignorant of what I was supposed to be feeling. The live music, for which the Grand takes out the first 3 rows of stalls and employs a much larger orchestra than normal, was brilliant, and I enjoyed the second act's dancing if not the story. The tale of Giselle - she falls for a nobleman dressed as a peasant (why he's dressed like this is unknown) who is betrothed to another, when she finds out she dies of a broken heart, and then rises from the grave to dance with him, for some reason - is tragic when written down but becomes fairly inconsequential when spun out into over-long dances. I will stick to the drama of Black Swan in future I think.