Beauty and madness

MANILA, Philippines - The ballet Giselle is said to be so important that the great American choreographer George Balanchine likened it to Hamlet.

In “Complete Stories of the Great Ballets,” he writes: “People go to see Giselle and to see new ballerinas dance it for the same reason we go to see new interpretations of Hamlet: the work is such a good one that we always discover something in it we hadn’t seen before, some variation in performance that brings out an aspect that seems previously concealed; we learn something new.”

These days, entertainment is all about gimmicks. With revivals of old stories, we’ve become obsessed about how an old story will be made new or what twist will be added to an old classic.

In their latest production of the romantic ballet Giselle, Ballet Philippines makes no pretense about it: their Giselle will be a straightforward restaging that will try to be as close to the known original as possible.

It will stick to what Giselle is meant to do: tell the story through dance and theater, relying on the lead ballerina to give a fresh take on a classic role.

Created during the 1840s at a time when ballet was developing into how we know it today – where the ballerina is the central figure of the show, and the story has a fantastical, other-worldly dimension to it – Giselle is about a peasant girl who falls in love with a man who turns out to be a nobleman engaged to be married. In shock and grief, she goes mad and dies. She becomes a wili, one of a group of spirits of women jilted by their lovers and who die before their wedding.

A century and a half later, it is still performed by dance companies all over the world. A ballerina’s success in the role becomes a defining moment for her.

BP’s Giselle will showcase three very distinct ballerinas: the expressive storyteller Katherine Trofeo, the impeccable, light-as-a-feather Carissa Adea, and the ingénue Denise Parungao, who makes her debut.

“My Giselle would be me,” says 19-year-old Parungao, the youngest of the three. The fresh-faced young dancer has great ballerina instincts and naturally exudes the girlishness and sweetness of Giselle’s character.

Parungao caught the attention of the dance world when she won the Luva Adameit Special Award at the NAMCYA competition, ballet category.

“I was probably 11 or 12 years old when I fell in love with the image of Giselle, the wili,” says Katherine Trofeo, who is now 35 years old. “I would always be in one corner of the studio practicing arabesque penché as if in a trance. Didn’t realize it would take more than 20 years to finally do it onstage.”

The seasoned Trofeo, who has tackled principal roles in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, and Madame Butterfly among others, is bent on going beyond the shy, demure and innocent Giselle.

“Giselle lives to dance – frail heart and all. And because of her frailty, there’s a sense of her life being on borrowed time,” she says.

With her strong personality and spunk, Carissa Adea, who was last year’s Philstage Gawad Buhay winner for outstanding dancer in a modern dance production, admits the character is far from her own. She says she relies on the coaching of restager Nonoy Froilan and his wife Edna Vida to help her shape her interpretation. With her beautiful airy quality, Adea easily slips into the role of the wili.

Between Giselle the sweet peasant girl with a frail heart and Giselle the wili is the infamous Mad Scene, which ensues after Giselle finds out that her beloved Albrecht has been fooling her all along. The scene is iconic in the ballet, and an effective Mad Scene is the crux of the story.

“(Froilan) has been encouraging us to be true to our emotions. It can be the shock of betrayal or the denial of reality that plunges Giselle into madness,” reveals Trofeo.

As for the audience, every performance is a treat, as each live performance has a special quality to it. “Every time we do, it can change,” says Trofeo.

Add to all that a finely honed corps de ballet and, in select performances, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra playing the haunting music of Adolphe Charles Adam.

And that makes it all worth watching.

Giselle runs on Aug. 16-18 at the CCP Main Theater with matinee and evening performances. For tickets, call Ballet Philippines at tel 551-1003.