La Scala Ballet. (National: Guillem's `Giselle' A Mixed Blessing).

LA SCALA BALLET ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER COSTA MESA, CALIFORNIA JULY 10-15, 2001

Modernism didn't exactly gallop across the footlights in Sylvie Guillem's Giselle for La Scala Ballet--not the way it does for a Mats Ek or Angelin Preljocaj. But this darkly thoughtful staging, which made its U.S. premiere in the Los Angeles area, managed to banish all of the first act's sunny ambiance, quaint storybook pictorials, and cardboard secondary characters. (There was nary a coquette nor a gamekeeper's rabbit among them.) It even de-mysticized Wilidom, replacing gossamer and eerie twilight for an abstract nowhere.

In their place, courtesy of Paul Brown's designs, was the verismo of early twentieth-century Italian rustica. The tones were earthen, the lighting dim, the personas palpably real. Guillem wore a plain braid down her back that elongated her line even further--unhappily canceling any image of small and vulnerable.

When villagers celebrated with a circle dance inside a barn, one coarse peasant let out a rough, insinuating whistle. Hilarion didn't skulk around as much as he menaced both Albrecht and Giselle. If not for Giselle's un-melodramatic mad scene and her death, the scorned boyfriend actually might have offed the girl of his dreams.

With the simple story turned upside down there were some striking naturalistic benefits. Giselle and Albrecht were very hands-on with each other, fondling and kissing and expressing their feelings without the artifice of mime. When it was used, however, wit was the watchword--as in a scene where a villager explained the Wili netherworld with mockery, throwing a white cloth over her head and dancing in a circle to depict the ghostly betrayed maidens. The choreography has undergone much change. This Giselle came from the divertissement mold. Wherever possible, and with a revised score that dates back to an earlier Adolphe Adam edition, the set pieces and pas de deux were minimalized, especially in the second act, which cut out many hallmark steps. These Wilis, without benefit of tulle, indeed seemed less like an order of nuns and more like bridal libertines in white Vera Wanglike gowns, all varied in style.

As for Giselle, Guillem greatly simplified and nearly abstracted her sorrow, thereby canceling the Romantic magic. Gone, among other highlights, was the suspended floating of the overhead lift in cross-stage arabesque, that wondrously spectral illusion with the foot skimming the floor.

But the Scala dancing was masterly throughout--especially that of Massimo Murru, a nobly authoritative yet highly feeling Albrecht; Francesco Ventriglia, fiercely confrontational as Hilarion, and Beatrice Carbone, an elegantly articulated Myrtha. David Garforth led a suave-sounding Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

For another critic's review of La Scala Ballet, see www.dancemagazine.com.