(Natalia Osipova and Herman Cornejo at curtain call.)
Wed, Jun 17 - Natalia Osipova was even better in tonight's La Sylphide than she was in Giselle on Saturday. Her jumps, as they were over the weekend, were still gasp-inducing, yet light and airy, but in Sylphide, that remarkable technical feat was folded into a complete performance, used as part of a seamless artistic performance. Osipova's Sylph was at times mischievous and childlike, at others mysterious and an otherworldy beauty.
When she wasn't in the sky, her dancing was fluid and easy, high extensions and developes unfolding languidly. Her attack is big and bold, and though it sometimes clashes with the delicacy of the choreography – created in distinctive "Danish" style the 1800s by August Bournonville – she still captured the role's many qualities. This Sylph was the perfect foil for Herman Cornejo's James – we totally get why he would chase after her into the forest.
Cornejo's James placed heavy emphasis on his jumps and virtuosic solo moments. It didn't seem a particularly refined performance, more of an athletic one, and it was even less Danish than Osipova's Russian-inflected performance. Dramatically, he was much more intense than the rest of the company, and so I'm not sure if part of the incongruity in his performance was because of this mismatch. Basically, I could see the effort in his performance, even though his jumps were mighty fun to watch.
ABT's production is fairly straightforward, though the company performs it more like any old story ballet, rather than taking into the details of style and drama that are unique to the work. The story gets across clearly enough, I suppose, but it perhaps wasn't as charming as a well-staged Sylphide could be.
(Natalia Osipova as the Sylph, in this photo from Bolshoi Ballet's production of
Bournonville's La Sylphide. Photo by Damir Yusupov.)
La Sylphide is interesting as one of the few still-performed examples of a Romantic drama and ballet. The Romantic (with a capital "R") movement in the 18th century literature and art that placed a strong emphasis on idealism and an elusive higher state – characters and images chase after higher, unattainable ideals and expressed an aspiration for some sort of higher reality than the flawed human one.
The story of La Sylphide captures this Romanticism, while mixing in a morality tale of its own: a Scottish nobleman James sees visions of a pretty female creature with wings. She is in many ways an Romantic vision of ideal femininity, with her airy purity, white dress and sprightly character. He chases after the sylph, abandoning his human bride-to-be at their engagement ceremony, only to kill the sylph when he finally manages to capture and kiss her. He has ruined his ideal by tarnishing it with his flawed human touch, and in the meantime, practical happiness has escaped him as his bride chooses another to marry while he was distracted chasing his unattainable ideal.
It's a story out of a specific era, but it remains a fascinating drama: steeped in societal traditions as it is (James afterall pays for his decision to chase after woodland creatures rather than stay put in the "correct" human world), perhaps it is a warning of sorts not to get too overly carried away chasing ideals. Or, be nice to homeless old people because it might come back to get you later: the story also contains an old witch, who acts as the catalyst for James' doom when he is cruel to her, mocking him when he is in a daze chasing after the Sylph.
The dramatic structure is strong enough to tell the story clearly and without too much outdated mime, and the choreography is also good enough to be entertaining dance. It is a fairly short ballet, only taking about 80 minutes total with an intermission. Act 1 is mostly narrative, where we see the Sylph teasing James, James chasing after her, and James with his bride and her friends at the lodge. In Act 2, James is in the forest and we see the Slyph and her friends dance in an extended sequence of classical dancing – the "white acts" of Giselle, La Bayadere and Swan Lake might be seen as descendants of this type of all-in-white divertissement. Finally, James obtains a charmed scarf from the old witch to capture the Sylph, she dies and is carried into the clouds.
(1) The corps and ensemble at curtain call; (2) Natalia Osipova and Herman Cornejo.
Tonight's program also included Paul Taylor's Airs as a curtain raiser, in order for the company to make a fuller evening of it. Set to sort Handel pieces and danced on flat foot, the piece was a lovely, mindless way to mark time until La Sylphide. To be fair, the choreography is quite sensitive to the music and was pleasing to see, and the work also gave a good opportunity for the young corps dancers in the cast to shine in solo parts. LeAnn Underwood made a particularly strong impression tonight, after standing out in Saturday's Giselle as well.
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