Review: National Ballet’s remount of Giselle features two strong debuts | Canada Voices

• Title: Giselle
• Choreographer: Sir Peter Wright
• Company: National Ballet of Canada
• Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs to Nov. 24, 2024

There are great ballerinas. And then there are great Giselles.

The title role of this 1841 ballet is a career-making or career-breaking challenge. Balletomanes of a certain era would refuse to see anything but a virtuoso in the part, worried that a lesser dancer could grind the drama into mush. The plot – love, betrayal, suicide, vengeful maidens rising from the dead – can certainly invite performances that feel like stilted specimens preserved in tulle. But for a real artist, Giselle is a windfall, an opportunity to showcase depth and range. The best ones offer emotions that are completely at odds with the medium’s technique – raw, violent and unruly.

The National Ballet’s remount of Giselle opened on Wednesday night in Toronto with a cast that audiences know well. Principal dancers Svetlana Lunkina and Harrison James have held the coveted first night slot for three consecutive productions over the span of nearly a decade. It’s easy to understand the company’s instinct to keep giving the pair prime real estate; Lunkina brings her entire Bolshoi soul to the nocturnal magic of Act 2, and James is both princely and caddish as the ill-fated Albrecht. But this time round, I opted to see the second evening production and catch two debuts instead: newly-promoted principal dancer Tirion Law and principal dancer Siphesihle November.

It was a good move. Law and November seemed to have made a behind-the-scenes pact not to overdo the drama, and the rewards are extraordinary. We get the sense that we’re watching a real couple flirt and make each other laugh – no easy feat when their language is pas de basques and promenades. The duo recently danced together in Rhapsody in the company’s mixed program, but their partnership is even richer here. Law is effortlessly lovely as a young girl hungry for love and experience. In the wrong hands, the role can feel mawkish, but Law gives it a candour and vitality that is often hard to come by in more mature dancers. Meanwhile, November is in his element as the charming but immature Albrecht, out for a good time. He never falls into the trap of overdoing the prince’s swagger – he is genuine, playful, direct.

The first and second acts of the ballet are nothing alike, and neither are the two Giselles that inhabit them. Ballerinas tend to excel at one part over the other. The brightness and vigour demanded of the first Giselle don’t necessarily co-exist in a dancer capable of the ethereal lyricism of the second. Lunkina, for example, is an Act 2 shoo-in. Her natural weightlessness and grace make her beautifully suited to the gloomy heroine that emerges after intermission. Law’s crisp technique and tonal sharpness lend themselves more naturally to the bright-eyed Giselle of Act 1, but I found her just as convincing as Giselle beyond the grave. Grounded and mournful, she creates a full emotional arc, while mastering the distinct shapes of Romantic ballet. Time suspends as she hovers with her leg extended à la seconde or floats into those sleepy arabesques with the curiously rounded hands distinct to the era.

Dancers can get showy with Albrecht’s sequences of jetés and beated jumps but, once again, November doesn’t take the bait. His spectacular leaps seem in service of the story; Albrecht has been condemned to dance into the night and November gives the challenging choreography a sense of mania and despair. It’s exciting to see the young dancer, who has soared up the company hierarchy so swiftly, access this sort of intensity.

As Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, principal dancer Koto Ishihara offers an interpretation that is both subtler and chillier than the imperious tyrant we normally see. And as the hapless Hilarion, Giselle’s scorned suitor, principal Spencer Hack manages to make heaps of pantomime look relatively non-ridiculous. That’s no faint praise.

The corps de ballet, full of many new faces, looks uniformly strong. There were a couple of unpolished moments in the newly reinstated Pas de Six, but otherwise the dancing was notably expressive and clean. The company is in a moment of transition, with principal dancer Jurgita Dronina bidding farewell on Sunday afternoon, among other recent and upcoming retirements. So it’s heartening to see standout talent in the lower ranks – Emerson Dayton, Nio Hirano, Kiera Sanford, Donald Thom, Ayano Haneishi, Keaton Leier – as a forecast of the National’s future.

In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)