La Sylphide both unconvincing and charming

La Sylphide (Alina Nanu). Photo: Sergei Gherciu.

Author Zuzana Rafajová

The roots, shapes and transformations of the ballet

The ballet La Sylphide was first created by choreographer Filippo Taglioni with a libretto by Adolphe Nourrit on the stage of the Paris Opera in 1832. The protagonist was Taglioni's daughter Marie, whose performance and portrayal ensured her immortality and largely shaped the subsequent development of classical dance. A second version of the ballet was staged just four years later by August Bournonville in Copenhagen, Denmark, for his talented pupil Lucile Grahn. The libretto remained more or less identical, but this time the music was by Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoffer, but a new composition has been made by the Danish composer Herman Severin von Løvenskiold. Bournonville's version has been performed continuously at the Danish Royal Ballet until the present day, which suggests that the choreographic form and the overall structure of the piece have remained untouched. This is not the truth, and from the standpoint of dance history perhaps unfortunately, even in Bournonville's lifetime his staging saw changes, especially after the choreographer himself abandoned the role of an active performer (he created the role of James for himself) and cut out variations or mime scenes for the dancers who replaced him.

Bournonville's successor as ballet master and company director, Hans Beck (1861-1952), made another contribution to the work. He is credited with many of the variations from Act 1, as well as the famous divertissement at the beginning of Act 2. Another important figure in the evolution and transformation of the piece was the dancer and choreographer Hans Brenaa (1910 - 1988), who created additional sections for his production (e.g. Effie's solo in Act 1). Peter Schaufuss, whose staging, which he first created for the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet) in the late 1970s, drew on historical sources, Bournonville's own notes and a piano reduction of the score and included, for example, the following: two solos for Effie in Act 1, a variation for James before Sylphide appears for the second time, more minor variations for the corps dancers, a brief duet between James and Effie before the start of the final Scottish reel, and an extra variation for Sylphide in Act 2.

Thus, even the Danish La Sylphide is not as pristine and untouched as it may have seemed. Yet what sets it apart from other 19th-century ballets is the style and the care that has been taken to preserve it. The Danish ballet technique has its own specifics; it is based on a crisp, but at first glance seemingly inconspicuous allegro, the attention is evenly spread between female and male dancers, there are no high lifts, and the partnering is kept to a minimum. The port de bras and épaulement are peculiar, the feet of the dancers are soft and the virtuosity is not put on display as ostentatiously as we are used to in works of the last third of the 19th century. Denmark, too, is changing, of course; the Romantic style is not preserved in a museum-like way, yet the local Bournonville style is clearly visible and recognisable.

Johan Kobborg, a graduate of the Royal Danish Ballet School and a former principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, who first staged La Sylphide with his then-home company, The Royal Ballet in London, in 2005, is also following this style. The Prague production, however, differs in detail. Firstly, Kobborg restores some musical passages from Løevenskiold's original score, which was rediscovered a few months ago, and secondly, some scenes from the libretto – most notably the opening mime between James and his friends, which is unknown in Danish productions, but can be found in Pierre Lacotte's La Sylphide (where James and Gurn interact), which refers to the original Parisian production of the ballet by Taglioni and Nourrit.

Romanticism without style...

The story of the romantic tale is simple. James, a Scottish young man, is about to marry Effie when a mysterious woodland fairy named Sylphide appears in front of his eyes beckoning him into her world and James, being the torn, hesitant, emotional and yes, egotistical romantic hero that he is, eventually succumbs to her, fleeing into the woods, leaving Effie to her tears and to his friend Gurn, who is in love with the girl anyway. A romantic relationship between a human and a flying supernatural creature, however, simply cannot work (or cannot work the way James would have imagined), and since the leitmotif of Romanticism, in general, is that of unlucky love and broken hearts, James eventually brings about Sylphide's undoing through his physical desire and a certain possessiveness, aided by the magical veil of the witch Madge. The wings fall to the ground, the fairy dies, James loses everything, his heart breaks, and Madge is shown triumphant over his lifeless body.

As previously mentioned, Bournonville's technique is crucial in the performance of the Danish La Sylphide. And it's not just the ability to master the variations and their steps, épaulement and port de bras, it's the overall style that includes mime, acting, attention to detail and a kind of intuitive dancefulness that makes Bournonville's ballets unmistakable in their atmosphere. And this is something that is cardinally absent in Prague. Above all, the cast of the first opening night left that lightness, picturesqueness and Romantic aura far behind, which led to an extremely disappointing performance. While Alina Nanu was cute as the title heroine, and properly impish in her love for James, for example when he lured her with a veil at the end, she really looked like an ingenuous child barely on the verge of puberty chasing after a new toy. The movements of her torso and arms, however, seemed stiff as a ramrod, with no sign of any romantic curves or playfulness, and she clearly struggled with that much-needed softness of her feet, the smooth transitions between demi pointe and pointe, and the subtle landings (by far the best in this aspect was Romina Contreras as one of the solo sylphs during the 2nd premiere). Nanu's James Paul Irmatov does indeed possess an enviable aplomb and could have shown off his high ballon in the jumping variations, but, as we have established, Bournonville is not about big spectacle; the allegro is present and the solos do stand on it, but it is a small allegro, full of tiny batteries, double rond de jambe and other ornaments, where the attention is focused on their equilibristics and clear feet rather than on the height of the jump itself and the kilt flying up to the dancer's head... For me, however, far worse is Irmatov's take, or rather lack of, on the character of James. In the first act he has no coherent evolution, it's unclear where he's coming from, what he's going through. The changes in his moods are random, and played out on a very limited palette of bland colours, which is simply not appropriate for this moody romantic, questioning his life choices, wavering between fantasy and reality, both dreamy and cholerically explosive. On stage, he more or less displays James's scripted emotional attitudes, but does so without any deeper understanding, which only results in sterile, flavorless choreography, not any human emotions that are meant to touch anyone.

Inevitably, the mime scenes, an essential part of romantic ballets and their specific language, suffer from a similar lack of sensitivity. For many of today's performers and audiences, these scenes are not always entirely comprehensible and can come across as dated, hollow, and merely as a sequence of gestures and meaningless movements, at worst even as ridiculous and stupid. When it is done badly when the performer seems not to know why they are making a particular gesture, what is its meaning and what they are trying to express when they make it just another pre-choreographed scene, a filler between the variation and the corps dance. The only person who in this sense saved the day on the first opening night was the splendid Gurn performed by Matěj Šust, whose interpretation allowed the dancer to create a fully-fledged, solid character with growth and a clear dramatic arc. Irina Burduja was also very fine Effie, carefree and joyful at first, gradually more and more haunted by her internal doubts and concerns as a result of James's behaviour. Only perhaps did she accept Gurn's marriage proposal with all too quick enthusiasm...

... but sometimes with understanding

After a lacklustre, disappointing first opening night, however, the second premiere thankfully arrived and it is not often that there is such an abysmal difference between two performances as there was on this occasion. If I were to be nitpicky, I could still critique the female corps de ballet and their of romantic épaulement (the brightest exception being Alexandra Pera as one of the sylph soloist), but overall the company managed to tell a much more cohesive, dramatic and nuanced story. Aya Okumura as Sylphide was not as playful, she relied more on a slight flirtation and to fully develop her character she needed a partner with whom she could interact because she seemed a bit dull in her solos, but since Erivan Garioli was standing next to her, she was pretty much-taken care of. The young twenty-four-year-old member of the corps, who came to Prague two years ago, took on the romantic hero with the necessary exuberance, emotional instability and youthful recklessness in the best way possible. His technique may not have been as dazzling as Irmatov's, but the dancer became almost perfectly at home with his character, responding naturally to his surroundings, interacting and acting with the utmost ease that made you believe James, understand him and experience with him his excitement, his torment (including the defiant, amusing stomping as he tried to chase Madge away from the fireplace for the first time), his burning, overwhelming infatuation, and his final, painful sobering that was nearly heartbreaking in its raw, visceral expressiveness.

The image was then completed by the excellent Olga Bogoliubskaia as Effie, who was also very good at playing with musical accents in her dance and thereby giving her performances a personal twist, and the phenomenal Miho Ogimoto as Madge, leaving Tereza Podařilová from the previous evening, who moreover got completely lost in Act 2, miles behind. Ogimoto's charismatic, dramatic performance left no one in any doubt about her powers, she was magnetic, mysterious, sneaky and devious, and it was thanks to her that the climax of the performance had such impact. In her case, it was doubly regrettable that the choreographer decided to remove a previously added detail from the final scene, during which the witch reveals by lifting her skirt and flashing a white tulle something from her much more delicate, more airy past... The only remaining blank spot of the second premiere was alas Giacomo De Leidi's Gurn, who failed to break out of the schematics patterns and drifted through the ballet without much notice with the help of empty gestures and half-baked characterisation of his role and its interactions.

Bournonville without „bournonville“

A new set and costume design was created for the Prague La Sylphide, which was done by Martin Černý (set design) and Barbora Maleninská (costume design). Černý was faced with the difficult task of setting a generally intimate Danish ballet on the relatively large stage of the State Opera House, and although there is little to complain about, one cannot help but be nostalgic about the 2008 production of the same ballet staged by Frank Andersen in the historic building of the National Theatre, which was much more suitable for the piece and provided more opportunities for the use of stage effects that were now either missing (e.g. Sylphide descending from the window) or were lost in the large space (Sylphide's disappearance from the chair). Maleninska's costumes posed a far greater problem. She dressed the first act corps in earthy, overly blending colours, which made it impossible to distinguish the individual dancers from each other ( moreover, in the case of the Scottish ballet, colour is not only a decorative feature, it also serves as a defining element of each family), the material of the female dancers' skirts did not appear to have been chosen successfully (it seemed too light, not like the fundamentally heavier wool material that we would associate with the Scottish Highlands attire in the first place), and by far the worst idea was the choice of using dark tights in combination with black shoes. For if we are talking about the focus being placed primarily on footwork in Bournonville's technique, it was almost impossible to observe these well enough, owing to the dark sets as well; moreover, the dark colours made the dancers look stuck in the ground.

In an interview before the first performance (read it here), Johan Kobborg mentioned the old scenes he had been able to include in the Prague production thanks to the 1836 score he had discovered. However, these are not as mind-boggling changes and large-scale sections as one might have once imagined. The first act involves the aforementioned mime interaction between James and his two friends, whom the young man asks if they have seen a beautiful flying maiden, to which his response is both a reminder of his impending wedding and a general amusement at such nonsense as the apparition of a fairy. I am an advocate of the romantic mime, but the choice of the gesture for maiden (the men show her with the movement of both their hands, depicting the assumed - and greatly exaggerated - curves of the female body) does not strike me as being entirely appropriate, it feels ridiculous and inadequate, similarly to the depiction of the fairy, which, with the floating movements of the arms, is much more resembling a swan (although it is true that in the tradition of Danish productions of La Sylphide, at least since the 1970s, the fairy has been usually depicted by this gesture). In the second act, Kobborg then expands the scene between James and Sylphide in the forest clearing, where the fairy shows him her realm. This is followed by a brief section drawing on the music of James and Sylphide's original pas de deux, which flows easily into the familiar divertissement.

The comeback of La Sylphide to Prague has not been without a hiccup. Although the second opening night left a much better impression than the first, I'm still left disappointed by the painful lack of Bournonville's romantic style (it was at its best in the soundly danced, buoyant Scottish reel at the end of Act One), without which any of his works are inevitably half-baked, and if I didn't know Kobborg's production performed by other companies, I'd have concluded that the problem lies with the production itself. That way, one could possibly fault the staging, which, given that the author himself worked with the company, seems suspicious to me as well... Striking was the contrast with La Fille mal gardée, which the Czech National Ballet had first performed just five years prior, and which succeeded in capturing the similarly specific style and atmosphere of Ashton's ballet nearly to perfection! Hence, there is nothing to do but hope that when the production returns next season, the dancers will be given some more time to acquire the confidence and absorb the Bournonville's trademark legacy, and the ballet masters will be thorough in requiring it. I would have liked to extend a similar wish to the orchestra, whose performance in the case of both premieres was at times truly triumphant, but given the frequency with which criticisms are levelled at individual sections (the brass instruments and their sharp, off-balance metallic sound did not disappoint again, with the addition of audible falters from the strings), I am slowly losing any such hopes.

From the first and second opening nights on 11 and 12 May 2023, Prague State Opera.

La Sylphide

Choreography: Johan Kobborg after Auguste Bournonville
Music: Herman Severin von Lovenskiold
Set design: Martin Černý
Costumes: Barbora Maleninská
Light design: Pavel Dautovský
Conductor: Piotr Staniszewski