The dancing is superb in director/choreographer Akram Khan's updated version of Giselle for the English National Ballet, which is the Auckland Arts Festival's opening show.
The movement is theatrical, gestural, drawn from Kathak, folk and contemporary dance, 19th century ballet and the rich repertoires of each dancer. Blended together and fused in the creative process, this movement makes the work unique and stamps it on your memory.
Expressive solos and intense pas de deux move the story along, their virtuosity equalled by the lushly detailed, whirling and dashing ensemble which provides a sense of community. Recurring motifs indicate the symbolic complexity of everyday life for rich and poor alike. Communally witnessed deaths are a feature spiked with chills, with a ritualistic migrant mob in Act One and an assassination squad of malevolent maidens in Act Two.
Khan's plot remains in parallel with the rather improbable 19th century Giselle ballet which famously centres on a love triangle inflected with betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness. In common with the original ballet, his version includes a supernatural force of death-dealing maidens (the Wilis) and requires active suspension of disbelief if you are to exult in the dancing.
Khan's new version is set in the near present among migrant factory workers who live at the foot of a huge wall marked by their handprints. On the other side of the wall, wealthy landlords reside; owners of the factories who have denied the Outcasts employment and in whose factories many women workers have died.
