這是妮娜.安娜尼亞舒薇莉 (Nina Ananiashvili) 最後一季的演出了。如果沒記錯的話，於1992年年底我曾在國父紀念館看過她的演出。雖然不曾看過她演出一整齣舞劇，但拜 DVD 之賜，即使無法親炙，也看了她的唐．吉軻德；雖然芭蕾表演看錄影較為清楚，但錄影總有一股疏離感，讓人提不起勁。

令我驚訝的是這位評論家說：Nina Ananiashvili 看起來和他第一次於1986年看到她在波修瓦的演出時幾乎一樣。對於當年(1992)的演出我已不復記憶，就是明星舞蹈團，來台灣各自表演幾個段子的那種；再者，除非坐在前十排左右，也不可能看清楚她的模樣，只是依稀地記得她是一位手長腳長的名伶。不過那場表演是以她做號召的。對於芭蕾舞伶，我一直有很深的「成見」－－只要是用腳尖跳舞，會轉圈的，都是美麗動人、氣質優雅。

文中描述著 Nina Ananiashvili 與 Marcelo Gomes 絕佳的搭配，Marcelo Gomes 簡直是神乎其技，出神入化了。Marcelo Gomes 儼然和我心目中的 Mikhail Baryshnikov一般神奇，於是上YouTube看了幾段他的演出，－－真是如行雲流水，以後要好好留意這位舞者。

Marcelo Gomes, José Manuel Carreño 怎麼男舞者都是拉美來的，然後女舞伶大多是來自俄羅斯(含前蘇聯國家)？

這齣吉賽兒是我看過的第一齣芭蕾舞劇，也是 Misha 首次登台表演的舞劇，－－好想飛到紐約看 Nina Ana 和 Marcelo Gomes 的演出！紐約真是現代藝術之都。



Dance Review | 'Giselle'
A Radiant, Russian-Inflected Giselle Floats Again


Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
"Giselle": Nina Ananiashvili in the title role of a Russian favorite at the Metropolitan Opera House　　　　　　　　　

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY
Published: June 9, 2009

Though the ballet “Giselle” was conceived in France in 1841, Russia was the only place it was performed for decades (at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th). And to this day the role of Giselle is a specialty of Russian ballerinas. (I stretch the word “Russian” to include dancers from other once-Soviet countries who performed with Russia’s leading ballet companies.) When I think of the best performances I’ve seen of Odette-Odile in “Swan Lake” and Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty,” only a few Russian interpreters come to mind. With the title role of “Giselle,” however, the list is long.

As if to prove the point, four of the seven ballerinas presented by American Ballet Theater in its “Giselle” this week at the Metropolitan Opera House are Russian. These include the two interpreters of the role I have been most impatient to see, Diana Vishneva and Natalia Osipova. (New York has seen Ms. Vishneva dance it before, but I haven’t.)


Members of American Ballet Theater in "Giselle."

On Monday the Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili — looking just about the same as when I first saw her dance the ballet with the Bolshoi in 1986 but now halfway through her farewell season with Ballet Theater — showed both the best Russian virtues and the qualities that have made her singularly beloved worldwide. How easily she takes to the air; how beautifully energy flows down the ravishingly long limbs of her physique (and, apparently, beyond).


Ballet textbooks say that arabesque penchée — in which the dancer leans forward and downward while extending one leg up and behind — is the ultimate test of line. Ms. Ananiashvili took one of these on Friday and made it slowly stretch (I heard someone in the audience gasp) so that you thought about this standard position as if for the first time.


Ms. Ananiashvili.

The story emphasizes that Giselle is in love with dancing itself: with Ms. Ananiashvili, this was radiantly evident in both Act I (when Giselle is alive) and Act II (when she rises from the grave). As an actress, Ms. Ananiashvili gives a good impression of spontaneity, but as a dancer she has the thing itself. Her limbs keep glowing and stretching in the air as if helium were entering into them; she becomes newly luminous.


Ms. Ananiashvili dances very well with a range of partners. (On Friday she dances the role again with Jose Manuel Carreño, and last year she danced it with both him and Angel Corella.) Even so, there were many moments on Monday that caught the breath because of the selfless artistry that Marcelo Gomes brings to partnering and because of the double play between them.


In Act II, when the grieving Albrecht visits Giselle’s tomb, Ms. Ananiashvili suddenly ran across the stage and arrived in his arms for a moment before passing on; I have never seen this lift happen with such effortlessness, so that Albrecht really seemed surprised to find her passing through his grasp.

Later in the same episode, the famous overhead lifts (developed in the middle of the 20th century by the Bolshoi and gradually added by most Western interpreters) happened, again, with amazing speed and lack of acrobatics; Ms. Ananiashvili’s limbs stretched up into the air, and Mr. Gomes seemed to be trying to retain her.


Ms. Ananiashvili and Mr. Gomes in the production.

Mr. Gomes exemplifies integrity. Dancing, partnering and acting seem to spring from the same impulse; he is superlatively focused not just on his role but also on the whole world of each ballet. Every ballerina thrives in his hands. And he has been reaching new peaks this spring: his multidimensional sense of line and shape is more powerfully refined than ever before.

Some Albrechts are too noble to convince when disguised as peasants, and others too ignoble to suggest that this is only a disguise, but with Mr. Gomes all this simply becomes irrelevant: he’s classless, and as artless in his way as Giselle is. He’s glowingly virile, and he’s in this village because he’s in love.


But there’s one interesting difference between Ms. Ananiashvili’s Giselle and Mr. Gomes’s Albrecht. She’s in love with dance, and the fact that she’s dancing ballet is more or less incidental; in true Romantic style, she seems to be pushing beyond the steps. But he’s specifically in love with ballet, and he takes pride in making academic steps glorious.


There are perhaps three main versions of the steps for Albrecht’s last dance in Act II: Mr. Gomes chooses the long series of entrechat-six that Rudolf Nureyev introduced to the ballet, and he brings heroism to them that I don’t recall since Nureyev. You marvel at the height and ease of each jump, at the flashing brilliance with which his legs and feet crisscross in the air and — perhaps best of all — at the perfect rhythm with which he alights every time on the downbeat.

Of all Mr. Gomes’s gifts — and I have not mentioned his richness of dance tone, his personal charm or his glints of humor — timing is probably the greatest. He can dance steps you’ve seen dozens of times and lead you back into tiny details of why they were set to that music. Yet he draws no attention to this virtue: he makes it feel merely inevitable.

Most aspects of Ballet Theater’s “Giselle” are traditional and good (two adjectives that, in ballet, are synonymous far less often than you might imagine). I regret the many embellishments and reorchestrations made by John Lanchbery to the score, which is mainly by Adolphe Adam but not, despite the program’s claim, entirely so; it actually features interpolations by Ludwig Minkus, Johann Friedrich Burgmüller and, for the female solo in the peasant pas de deux, one Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Friedman.

The staging, by Kevin McKenzie, reaches its best in Act II with the wilis who connect dance and death, finely costumed by Anna Anni and finely danced by Ballet Theater’s female corps. They are introduced by Myrtha, their queen, who begins by dancing, like an operatic heroine, a recitative-aria-cabaletta series of dances. (They introduce the main thematic material for the rest of the act.)

It is conventional to dance this role with icy brilliance, and Gillian Murphy did no less on Monday: the proud beauty with which she holds her arms “en couronne” (haloing the head) at the apex of several jumps was memorable. But she did even more. As she danced from side to side, she allowed her torso to sway with a freedom that suggested that Myrtha’s nightly ritual is, for her, self-expression. She, too, loves to open herself to the air by dancing.




http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/arts/dance/10giselle.html

---

The review is taken from The New York Times at the above-stated URL.  The copyright of this review remains with its original owners.  The author of this review and The New York Times are not involved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.