Review: La Sylphide at Aotea Centre

Sir Jon Trimmer and Michael Braun in La Sylphide.

The artistic ideals of the Danish balletic tradition are faithfully and beautifully reproduced in this Royal New Zealand Ballet season of La Sylphide, choreographer August Bournonville's hallowed contribution to the Romantic style.

As near as we can know, La Sylphide today is virtually unchanged from its premiere in 1836, because of the careful stewardship of the Royal Danish Ballet which has maintained and regularly performed it over almost two centuries.

Mannered and mimed, it is melodramatic in the extreme - terrible revenge is wreaked by Sir Jon Trimmer's dreadlocked crone Madge on the whimsical nymph and her Highland laddie James over nothing more than a place by the baronial fire. And there is no happy ending.

The forward tilt of the dancers' torsos, the exaggerated expressiveness of arms, shoulders and the tilt of heads, all set above the precise beat and bounce of extremely busy legs, marks out the work distinctly from ballets that came later, like Swan Lake.

It could be a bit of a shock to contemporary sensibilities. But the dancers of the RNZB, who have grown up far from the ingrained traditions of historical European opera houses, enter into the spirit of this dance wholeheartedly and with elan. Antonia Hewitt's nymph is gorgeous, a little bit naughty, flirtatious, palpably in love and genuinely heart-wrenching in death. Michael Braun, as James, wears the kilt and the choreography in joyful style and manages to make his character warmlybelievable.

They are backed by polished performances from the whole cast, including 13-year-old Imogen McGill as Fiona, the jilted Effie's little sister, and by the gorgeous decor and costumes by Anne Fraser from the Australian Ballet.

Dances from Napoli, taken from another Bournonville work, precede the main work. Performing on a bare set without much dramatic context, the dancers give it their best shot but the sentiment of the piece falls flat and the Tarantella finale seems forced and too foreign.