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Ballet Nacional de Cuba stuns with a spectacular 'Giselle'

 
Spirits of the "Wilis," young women who died before their wedding day, factor into the plot of the ballet Giselle, performed by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts May 23, 2018. Courtesy of the Straz Center.
Spirits of the "Wilis," young women who died before their wedding day, factor into the plot of the ballet Giselle, performed by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts May 23, 2018. Courtesy of the Straz Center.
Published May 24, 2018

TAMPA — The Ballet Nacional de Cuba performed Giselle, its signature ballet, on Wednesday at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. Fifty-four dancers charmed a packed house, culminating in about two hours an effort that took more than three years.

It was well worth the wait.

The ballet debuted in 1841 in Paris with choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot and music by Adolphe Adam, who is best known for composing the Christmas carol, O Holy Night. Founding Ballet Nacional artistic director Alicia Alonso refined the original choreography after many years dancing the title role, widely regarded as the premier interpretation of the 20th century.

The story by Theophile Gautier, adapted from legend, centers on a peasant girl admired by two suitors. She rejects one of these. The ballet begins with the other, a shy young man who approaches her wooded cottage. This is Albrecht, a duke who has disguised himself as a villager to make himself more accessible.

Raul Abreu as Albrecht cannot at first bring himself to knock on the door, and the delicacy of those first few attempts defines the show. The first of two acts relies mostly on pantomime, a story that in the hands of this company surpasses words. The lovers advance and retreat; he replaces her "loves-me-not" daisy with one that works.

Premier dancer Sadaise Arencibia embodied unsophisticated loveliness, a presentation disarming and deceptive. In her you see not only the arcs her body describes, you see the air where she is not. Ernesto Diaz rushes forth as Hilarion, the crude gamekeeper who is also smitten by Giselle, conveying the ugliness of sexual force with beauty. Albrecht and Hilarion clash. There's a celebratory dance for Giselle and Albrecht by the young women, done with astonishing precision until interrupted with a warning by Giselle's mother, Bertha, who fears that her daughter, already in delicate health, could die. Yiliam Pacheco as Bertha casts a spell on the village as a spirited score hits it first minor passages. The smallest gestures speak volumes as she ushers Giselle back into the cottage.

Other plot points include a show within a show as villagers celebrate the end of the crop season for a crowd of royals. Here the athletic power of the dancers emerges, as peasants in the ensemble leap 4 feet off the stage, painting arcs and curves that shoot up in the air or die on the ground. Chief among the charmed audience are a prince and his elegant daughter Bathilde (Ginett Moncho), who happens to be the duke's fiance.

This ends badly as the duke's identity is exposed, then Giselle sinks into a suicidal depression and dies. She emerges near her tombstone in the second half, known as the "white act," joining dozens of other young women who died of broken hearts before their wedding day. The sequences that follow are all pure dance. Ghostly spirits flit en pointe from one end of the stage to the other. They devour male mourners, starting with Hilarion, passing him down a breathtaking assembly line that then constricts and crushes him.

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The perfection they displayed is hard to overstate. To imagine what any of this ballet was like, think of a chorus dancer who once caught your eye. Refine those Broadway moves to something exponentially more difficult, and multiply the total by 54. A grieving duke would have encountered the same fate, had not Giselle intervened. Her forgiveness saves him. She dances a sad echo of the folk dance with which she introduced herself. Their permanent goodbye is an elaborate pas de deux, the product of a time that prized eloquence of emotion, not coolness.

The immediate standing ovation lasted between five and 10 minutes as the company, still in somber character, took a multitude of varied and formal bows. Afterwards, a euphoric David Straz, a key financier of the effort to bring the ballet to Tampa, said it best.

"Anybody who didn't see this show missed the performance of a lifetime," Straz said.

Contact Andrew Meacham at ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.