The story tells that a simple, beautiful and innocent young woman falls in love with a nobleman already engaged to marry who, to win her over, pretends to be a villager. But the couple will have to face forces that will try to nullify the eternal love they profess.
giselle is considered the Hamlets of ballet, an absolute masterpiece of the dance theater of Romanticism. It was premiered in 1841 at the Paris Opera, becoming a pure and fundamental piece of classical dance, both for the treatment of romantic ideals and for the use of the most refined theatrical technique of the 19th century.
On this occasion it is the En-Avant company that produces this staging, with the support of Corporación El Rosado. “It is a classic, one of the few that have endured over time with its original version. Initially, this choreography was in charge of Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, at a time when the diaspora of opera from ballet from its center, in its foundations, its beginnings, in the Paris Opera towards Russia. Marius Petipa manipulated almost all the ballets that existed and that were being created according to. From there, the choreographies are preserved quite intact; suddenly, some scenes are adjusted in terms of musical times. But I think the most beautiful of giselle it is exactly that: a piece that has been able to be preserved intact from its origins and that connects us artists with generations and generations behind of male and female dancers who have interpreted these roles. This gives it much more value,” says Jessica Abouganem, director of the En-Avant dance school.
The cast chosen for this ballet It is made up of renowned local and foreign dancers, with two Argentines being responsible for the role of the leading couple. “Albrecht and Giselle will be interpreted by the dancers of the Stable Ballet of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata Miguel Angel Klug and Melisa Heredia. Klug has previously performed in Guayaquil; in fact, we danced together in 2016, on one occasion when I presented Don Quixote; and, that same year, we were going to present ourselves, but he suffered an injury that he had to attend to urgently and I had to solve his absence with another American dancer who was in Guayaquil just ten days after the presentation. He’s Max Foster, who is part of my team as a master rehearser and coach of the group along with me. He will play the antagonistic Hilarion in giselle”, recounts Jessica.
For the second act, the director of En-Avant highlights the role of Myrtha, the queen of the Willis, will be played by Marina Robbinson. “She is one of our first figures of En-Avant dancers, since the first season, in 2017. From there, there will be an extensive dance group that we had to convene because our cast is much smaller. This ballet it requires a much larger dance troupe; for this reason, the call was opened to be able to do the complete assembly ”, he explains.
The call began in August. “Then there were two days of auditions, and the following week we began the editing with the teacher Sasa Adamovic, who lives in Panama, but is a native of Serbia. He was my teacher during my training in Panama”, says Jessica.
In total, around 30 dancers will be on stage. “There was a lot of enthusiasm during the call, as many more people showed up than we expected. We had initially contemplated a smaller number of summoned, but we had to make a second day to choose from among 60 people. yes i must say It has been a bit painful to come across the reality that training during the pandemic was interrupted and only now many dancers are resuming their training, so I noticed that they remained as gaps, and there was a delay in physical training and preparation for the artists, so we had to “turbo” it during these last months of preparation to be able to level everyone and move the project forward, as it deserves, with all the standards that this requires ballet”.
Jessica says that she has been very careful before choosing this ballet and take it on stage. “Precisely because it is one of the purest jewels of the balletand doing it for the sake of doing it is even sacrilegious to me. It is a great challenge for me, and I assume it with great joy and emotion, but above all with a lot of responsibility to take care of it, protect it as it deserves.. The story, the assembly of giselle It was put together at a time when France was coming out of a political, social depression; the ballet revived society. And without making a comparison, there is a parallel after we just came out of a pandemic. Romanticism in dance began to manifest itself later in history, not at the same time as literature or painting, but they do coincide in their aesthetics, in their super-heartbreaking, fanciful and supernatural plots of this impossible love of life after death. death. These are values that can be seen in giselle”.
Why bring Giselle’s story to these times? Is Romanticism still valid? Abouganem points out that Giselle’s story has a lot of fantasy, with these spirits that lived in the forest, who were women who died of lovesickness, were vengeful and took men away, making them dance until they died. “Obviously they are proposals taken from all reality, even in those times, but love-heartbreak-death are always in force. I think it sticks very closely to that, and we are going to tell it in this ballet. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic and I want to be like Giselle, give her one last breath to get this play done.. It is important to give it visibility so that the public knows why this ballet still valid. It’s a classic for a reason.”
Jessica Abouganem arrived in the country in 2011 from Panama, but her “entire” life has been dedicated to ballet.
For the presentation of giselle, Corporación El Rosado is behind all the executive part, says Jessica. “En-Avant is in charge of the artistic production, the staging, the training of the dancers, the set design, the costumes. When I saw the opportunity to do something with giselleI spoke with don Johnny (Czarninski) and he had all the opening”.
Jessica pauses to talk about the photographs used in the posters for giselle by En-Avant. “Just as Edgar Degas did when he entered the halls of the Paris Opera and was able to mentally record —because photography did not exist at that time— the dancers during their breaks or rehearsals to be able to capture them in their works, we are removing from our essays as a replica of what the famous painter did, photographs by the artist Elías Aguirre. He has recorded with such delicacy and almost getting into the mind of Degas, and giving us images that serve to promote giselle”.
giselle will be presented on Sunday, October 30 at 7:00 p.m. in the main hall of the Sánchez Aguilar Theater. The entrance will be free.
Source: Eluniverso
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