Giselle ballet dancers
Giselle by the Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let, May 2021. Pho­to cred­it: Stephen A’Court.

Giselle is a bal­let I know very lit­tle about, aside from one episode of Angel and read­ing the syn­op­sis on Wikipedia:

The ghost-filled bal­let tells the trag­ic, roman­tic sto­ry of a beau­ti­ful young peas­ant girl who falls for the flir­ta­tions of the deceit­ful and dis­guised noble­man Albrecht. When the ruse is revealed, the frag­ile Giselle dies of heart­break, and Albrecht must face the oth­er­world­ly con­se­quences of his care­less seduc­tion.

I was real­ly keen to see it when I heard the Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let were bring­ing it back in its clas­sic form — no new-fan­gled inter­pre­ta­tions or stag­ing here. Unfor­tu­nate­ly on the night I could­n’t make it, so my knowl­edge of Giselle is still pret­ty lim­it­ed. I did how­ev­er send my friend Sara along  instead. Her review is below. The Welling­ton run is fin­ished, but there’s shows com­ing to Palmy, Napi­er, Auck­land, Christchurch and Dunedin still, woo!

Giselle by the Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let, May 2021. Pho­to cred­it: Stephen A’Court.
Have you heard of peo­ple falling asleep to bal­let? Well not tonight. Watch­ing 12 pri­ma bal­leri­nas danc­ing in sync was a won­der to the eyes. I was glued the entire time.
The set and cos­tumes were beau­ti­ful with fan­tas­tic syn­chro­ni­sa­tion of music and dance that real­ly brought the sto­ry to life .
You could see the amount of work and prac­tise these young per­form­ers put in to this pro­duc­tion.
Such pre­ci­sion and grace through­out the whole evening. It real­ly was a priv­i­lege to see the very best of bal­let in New Zealand!
Giselle by the Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let, May 2021. Pho­to cred­it: Stephen A’Court.