| Fleet of foot Guest artists soar in riveting 'Giselle' 04/09/2001 By Margaret Putnam / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News LEWISVILLE – Complain, complain. The stage is too low. The music is canned. The sets are dreary.
But did it matter?
No.
Julie Kent and Damian Woetzel took over the stage at Lewisville High School's Stuver Auditorium on Sunday afternoon as the stars of LakeCities Ballet Theatre's Giselle. Stunning is hardly strong enough to describe their riveting performance. You expect dancers of their stature – Ms. Kent is a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre; Mr. Woetzel a principal with New York City Ballet – to dance flawlessly.
That they did. But beyond that, they made the characters of Giselle and Albrecht, Duke of Silesia, utterly believable. From the minute Albrecht dashes into the village glen, a little surge of excitement rises. He's so much the aristocrat, so impatient to see this lovely young maiden hidden in her mother's cottage.
Giselle runs out, and her youth and excitement are palpable. Not aware that Albrecht can see her, she reveals her love with little swirling gestures. She dances with breathless delight; all the while Albrecht watches. He moves toward her, and suddenly she's abashed, terribly shy, one moment ready to yield to him and the next, too timid.
It's wonderful to watch their relationship unfold. So when Albrecht's fiancee, a princess, appears, the shock of Albrecht's true identity undoes Giselle. In some versions, Albrecht is a cad, but here he's much in love, and Giselle's death throws him into frantic despair. He races among the stunned crowd, wild with grief, before throwing himself over Giselle's body. The emotional intensity comes to a head and leaves us, the audience, stunned. Few dancers have such power.
In the famous second act, Giselle struggles to save her lover from the fury of the Wilis – maidens who died before marriage and take revenge at night. The change in mood could not be more striking, from the spirited dancing of the villagers in daylight to the impassioned dancing of the Wilis in moonlight. Obviously well-coached, the corps of Wilis was fierce and in perfect synchronized form. Giselle, by contrast, becomes floaty and airborne as Albrecht soars, bounds and flies impetuously through space – almost going offstage at one point.
The plot of the second act is preposterous, but Ms. Kent and Mr. Woetzel make it believable, not just sad but tragic. The last view of Giselle, vanishing in the dew, and Albrecht, lying facedown in grief, has the ring of truth.
Margaret Putnam writes about dance for The Dallas Morning News.
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