Olesya and Giselle

Dedicated to Mariinsky corps de ballet.

GISELLE
22 February 2004, Sunday, matinee, 12:00
Mariinsky Theatre, 221 season
967-th performance (since the first staging in 1842)
888-th performance (of Petipa's staging in 1899)

Giselle - Olesya Novikova
Albert - Anton Korsakov
Ecuyer - Andrey Yakovlev
Hans - Ivan Popov
Berthe - Natalia Sveshnikova
Bathilde - Elena Bazhenova
Duc - Vladimir Ponomarev
Pas de deux - Elena Sheshina, Vladimir Shklyarov
Myrthe - Ekaterina Kondaurova
Zulme - Elena Vostrotina
Monna - Jana Serebryakova

Olesya Novikova performed her first Giselle four years ago during her first season in Mariinsky, being 18 years old that time.

I wont meant about her quality as a dancer - she graduated from Vaganova Ballet Academy with a red diploma and got the second prize in Vaganova-Prix 2002. And her still short life in Mariinsky is running on your eyes there with its own flights upwards and landings down, its inspirations and devastations as well. But she always remains a favorite of the audience of all ages there.

Why they keep eyes on her? Because of her sincerity of the nature and a stage lightness. Novikova has a big "step" (so-called a jump in ballet language) and an unusual ability for soaring in the air - "ballon", and her ballon is unusual for standards of the great Mariinsky theatre where too many famous extra-ordinary dancers performed before her.

Giselle of Olesya Novikova has this particular characteristic. There are many other technical and dramatical merits in her dance, but the natural gift to a huge, really "aerial" jump overshadows all the rest in her best and remains in the memory as a wonderful fragile vision full of gentle light and a poetical character of this young danceuse.

My God!!! The unattainable dream of ballet lovers of the last two centuries - to see a light, elegant and graceful jump, and very different in its character in every two acts of "Giselle", famous for its "daylight" and "night" actions, so polar with their dramatical and choreographical compositions. And this jump paints up the character of the heroine herself, makes it alive, plays in different colours, and this jump lives itself, and beats on like a trembling song of a small singing-bird.

In the first act the jump of Novikova is playful, it radiates like a rainbow, and both Giselle's stage friends and audience swim into fresh colour of the rainbow. Her jump is a kind of a cristal clearwater source, and the feelings of the girl stream from one to another - from a joy of life into the first youthful love, from a wish for happiness into a love to dance - all this is nuances and soft shades of Olesya's jump.

But look please, she listens a playful knock and runs over the door-step, and then, quickly looking around, enters the stage joyfully. A light run with a straight corps and on the straight legs, where you could feel a bursting outside song, and this song, coming out, exploads with jumps. (pics № 1 and 2)

This famous "Giselle's step" is called ballone - a waving the upper body from side to side, which gives the personnage a visible sense of dreaming, and naivity, and a playfulness, and there are different styles of executing it, which makes prevaling one or anoter side the heroine's character.

"The jump ballone, in words by Gautier, creates an image of a dance-mad girl who is busy with a "stretching" her legs and the body" (Y. Slonimsky, "Giselle")

But there is no "waving" in Novikova's run! Her corps is straigt still, but the jump is exceptional with its lightness and easiness. She lives in the air, and the air is her natural world. Lightness, lightness, and again lightness, and above all there is an effortless airity there - and this is hers, Olesya Novikova's Giselle, the quality of the character. (pics № 3 and 4)

She ends the circle with still "straight" ballones and stops, freezing into a deep arabesque, as if she clings to the ground in attempt to lock off her "dance itching" into legs. (pic № 5)

She sinks in arabesque clearly, refined, gracefully and naturally - there are real petersburgian hands with thin and lively fingers, and a gentle plie which proportions are keeping by the leaning upward left toe of the balancing leg, and this she executs stylishly, and the essence of this style is in its clarity and genuineness.

Briefly listened herself, and her soul, she rouses up and remembers the knock into the mother's door: (pic № 6)

Novikova caught up subtly and performed perfectly a "liveliness" of Giselle: her quick crossing from a naive curiosity into a playful joy of the early morning, then to a sudden fleeting dreaming en arabesque - to a game. And Giselle, so lively and spontaneous, is playful - she heard a door-knock, and she knows who is outside there, she wants to find the happiness, and she is scary of it... but this is her game, this is her own childdish invention: she wants a handsome youth to knock the door... and she starts to discover playfully all the mysterious corners of the stage... and she wants her beloved-to-be to live in this old hut (called in the theatre "a shed")... but he isn't replying to her call... but he is not coming out to meet her... but suddenly..... someone is placing the hand over her shoulder...

Quickly, in a short moment Olesya transforms her debut into the dream, which all balletomanes wait through the long years, visiting Mariinsky Theatre restlessly in waiting for this grandious moment of their lives, so boring and so tiresome without a wonder.

Corps de ballet is prepared amazingly well, and everything is ready to support this young artiste in her scenic life-play, but not a play into life. The naturalness of Olesya spreads around with the beauty of youth and maiden purity.

"Forget-me-not", a serie of big sliding in the air jetes, a famous Valse de Giselle, crowned up with a playful "caroussel", softly lilting and lullabing both lovers, and a triumph of a simple paysans dancing... The performance is going according Olesya's long lovely legs' scenario - as a light effortless dance, and corps de ballet accompanies her in harmony with its fleetings lines, and the audience supports them with repeating cries "bravo-bravo!"

Variation de Giselle. Olesya stands in preparation for diagonale after a big aerial jump as if she puts aways all worries about the difficulties of the number. "Do you dance, my friends, beautifully also? But could you dance this, as I do?" And she hops accurately this diagonale on the toes of the left foot, the same time demonstarting the shapes of her right foot, showing it to her friends but not to the audience - the foot is c-l-e-a-r! and alive! and girlish! (pics № 7 and 8)

This lovely diagonale is a peak of the emotional rise of Olesya's Giselle. And it's danced already, and Giselle is beloved, and her "dance exceptionality" confirmed with this light, childdishly mindless hops on one foot. She drinks up the adoration which is flowing from the eyes of her beloved!

And right in this very moment, in the moment of her triumph, Giselle suddenly bumps - as if into a wall - to a demanding gesture of Bathilde, so beautiful like a shiny sun over Rheinland valley. (pic № 9)

Lost and confusing, not able to believe what happend there, Giselle tries to explain to Bathilde who was so kind, lovely and sincere recently, but in vain. Albert couldn't be her beloved because of her poor birth, and the dazzling but non-dancing Bathilde has all rights and power on him.

Should Giselle accept this misery? Olesya's Giselle doesn't think about it - just her heart stops suddenly, falling down into a deep bottomless abyss, and her soul flies away into high and terrifying heavens. And in the Scene de folie we see an agony of the girl, who isnt with us already. (pics № 10 and 11)

Is the state of madness portraiting by Olesya natural enough? My dear sirs balletomanes, it couldn't be a question there! She wasn't with us already in the moment of your boring mind-work and balletomane's suspicions, she was dead already.

This is how she, my little lovely girl Giselle, got up her freedom from the lie and betrayal: (pic № 12)

The first sunny act is overpassed, and the life with its maiden secrets and artless joys left behind.

In the future - an eternal dance in the midnight grave silence, and Giselle's not-enough-danced legs will sing a song about the first love, which still exists as a tiny spark inside her transparent fleshless body. There is a cold kingdom of Mariinsky wilis waiting for you, my dear sirs balletomanes, in the future, with its inimitable Ekaterina Kondaurova, which irrepressible cruel power is lightened with soft soaring and ghostic "silver-haired" Jana Serebryakova and "never-ending-legged" Elena Vostrotina.

And this extra-gifted, exeptional young girl Olesya Novikova dedicates her own life to Petipa's House where the real genuine art of ballet dance still exists only.

(c) 2008 Mariinsky
Originally published 12 May 2008: http://mariinsky.livejournal.com/812889.html
Original Russian text: http://mariinsky.livejournal.com/812158.html
79 pics of this performance: http://mariinsky.livejournal.com/813115.html