BRB get the blend just right.Byline: By Dick Godfrey Giselle by Birmingham Royal Ballet The Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) is one of the UK's foremost ballet companies, based at the Birmingham Hippodrome in Birmingham, where it enjoys custom-built facilities such as the Jerwood Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Dance Injuries and the at Sunderland Empire A successful production of this everlasting classic requires just the right blend of ethereal fantasy, earthy realism, pathos and drama. Design, music and dance must work together. Failure by one is failure for all. This production - by Peter Wright and Galina Samsova - is the real thing and the current version is served by superb principal dancers. Molly Smollen is captivating and convincing as the maid of the title, suitably girlish in the bucolic atmosphere of much of Act One and sadly wraithlike in Act Two. She is partnered to great effect by Tiit Helimet as County Albrecht, combining nobility, ardour ar·dour n. Chiefly British Variant of ardor. ardour or US ardor Noun 1. emotional warmth; passion 2. and pathos with electric, gravity-defying elevation. Giselle has remained in the international repertoire for more than 160 years. Performances like this explain why. It completes another fine week by BRB. It was announced yesterday that next February we will see Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale (type 425C -- search for a lost husband -- in the Aarne-Thompson classification). The first published version of the fairy tale was a meandering rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in , a new full-length work from Artistic Director David Bintley. And BRB fans in the region have more to look forward to next year. As well as the company's traditional spring and autumn weeks on Wearside, a scaled-down version of the company will spend a week giving performances in Durham, Middlesbrough and York. Dick Godfrey |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion