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Reader rating
Dir: Wayne Eagling.
Cast: English National Ballet
Description: Traditional staging by Mary Skeaping, of the 19th century production of Adolphe Adam's classic romantic ballet.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square/Charing Cross 
, Tube / Bus: 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77a, 88, 91, 139 
Phone: 0871911 0200
Website: www.eno.org
Email: access@eno.org
Giving you the Wilis: this Giselle is quaint but moving
You can easily crick your neck with all the looking back in ballet. Take the English National Ballet's production of Giselle. It was commissioned in 1971 by the very venerable Dame Beryl Grey, ENB's then director, from the nearly-as-venerable Mary Skeaping, a former ballerina who danced with Anna Pavlova, probably the most venerable ballerina of all time. Skeaping was also cheek-to-cheek with Tamara Karsavina and Olga Spessivtseva, the two most important Giselles of the early 20th century.
Which all means that ENB's Giselle is knee-deep in pedigree and provenance.
But is it any good? Just because it has a clear view back, can it look us in the eye? Does it show us our deceptions and betrayals? Can we believe that Giselle dies of a broken heart? Or is it just a nicely danced re-creation of a Romantic-era ballet?
The first act, always an honest-peasant and trusty-turnip kind of scene, starts promisingly. Giselle's suitors, Hilarion (Fabian Reimair) and Albrecht (Thomas Edur), convey the essence of their characters, with the humble Hilarion tender and restrained, and the philandering toff Albrecht somehow too quick and nimble.
However, as soon as the peasants arrived you feel you've died and gone to a chocolate box. Cheery land workers and toiling sons of the soil are all very well, but their deference must reveal not only their social inferiority but also the emotional innocence that undoes Giselle. The ENB peasants little hinted at this.
Agnes Oaks plays the heroine as fragile and anxious, and also fairly gloomy, which doesn't give her far to go to the utter gloom of Act II. As for her dancing, it is, perhaps, too big in Act I, but all is transformed in the second half. This depicts her arrival with the Wilis, the ghosts of brides jilted before their wedding night. Virginal and vengeful, they lure young men to their deaths, and have their sights set on the now regretful Albrecht. After the posh panto of Nutcracker and Alice In Wonderland, it's great to see ENB do some proper dancing, especially the corps who gave a fleet-footed portrayal of the Wilis. Oaks's dancing conveyed Giselle's frailty, her movement light, her expression sorrowful, and in her duets with Edur, you don't doubt her love or forgiveness. Edur, too, came artistically alive in the second act, his Albrecht a very convincing penitent.
Skeaping's Giselle looks quaint and it looks back, but it also sees clearly, and by the close we believe in remorse, and forgiveness.
• Until 13 January. Information 0870 145 0200.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
