Tense, Clenched & Overstudied
"Lighten up, Diana!"
I wanted to yell that through a bullhorn on Wednesday night, when Diana Vishneva danced "Giselle" at American Ballet Theatre, opposite Vladimir Malakhov as Albrecht.In this, her first full performance at ABT this season, Ms.Vishneva seemed tense and overstudied. Her shoulders often looked clenched, and in Act II, her movement was sometimes thick where it should have been diaphanous.
Too often, the subject of the performance didn't seem to be Giselle's tragedy but rather Ms. Vishneva's personal desire to encapsulate the combined impact of every interpreter of the role since Carlotta Grisi at the 1841 premiere. And she seemed hell-bent on giving all of this immediately: There was an almost anxious edge to her Giselle from her first entrance. Her heart incident during the waltz was overstated, to the point where it seemed as if she had already died once before Giselle's actual death at the end of Act I.
Beneath the rather impermeable shell Ms.Vishneva slipped on, we could see the outline of the great Giselle she has been and can be. She understands very well who Giselle is; indeed, she was filled with ideas about every inch of the role, though these too often turned into stagy effects. She was at every moment magnetic and accomplished a good deal technically.Her Act II initiation dance was cataclysmic. She performed with gorgeous control in the solo Adagio that begins the Act II pas de deux.
Mr. Malakhov also had his technical faculties with him, but he seemed to have forgotten his wits. He offered some splendid dancing, such as his brises in the Act II coda. He also provided a lot of mannerisms and cardboard histrionics, however. The run he employed in Act II - somewhere between a jog, a shuffle, and a prance - has got to be excised.
Sascha Radetsky as Hilarion was rough and menacing in Act I, sometimes to excess, but his dancing in the second act was exactly right. Pursued by the Wilis, he crashed to the ground in waves of panic and struggle that were also beautiful formally.
On Wednesday afternoon, "Giselle" was led by Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky. In Act II, Ms. Dvorovenko's passionate determination to save the lover who had betrayed her registered truthfully without breaching the gentler delineation of Romantic ballet. She is not ideal as a Romantic ballerina - she has a high jump but a hard one, without the appropriate lilt - yet she accepted the containment the style imposes. There was an infectious generosity to her performance.
Mr. Beloserkovsky was a convincing aristocrat, his face and body staring down his squire's objections to his dalliance and masquerade, and he was believably desperate when pleading for mercy from Myrta. In Act II, Ms. Dvorovenko's urgency slightly put Mr. Beloserkovsky in the shade, but that was legitimate to the story line they created.
As Myrta, Veronika Part took to the air in huge and voracious jumps without losing her silhouette or the composure of her arms. Her persona was multi-dimensional by virtue of her almost imperturbably voluptuous figure and the seething, stunted spirit it contained. She made Myrta akin to the haunted, tragic grandeur of a Flying Dutchman.
At both performances Wednesday, particularly the matinee, the corps of Wilis was a vital participant in the design and drama of Act II. In the famous sequence of traveling arabesques, they took pains not to clump, instead rolling through their feet as they hopped from arabesque to arabesque. Their finesse was highly appreciated.
American Ballet Theatre's Metropolitan Opera season runs until July 15 (Lincoln Center, 212-362-6000).
