Gurn loves Effy, Effy is engaged to James but James is away with the fairies: a recipe for love tragedy.
Tamara Rojo’s English National Ballet hasn’t danced August Bournonville’s La Sylphide since 1989 (before most of today’s dancers were born or thought of). The easy elevation and unshowy brilliance of the Danish style do not come naturally to them but their accents have improved since the dispiriting première in Milton Keynes last October. The character ensembles look perkier although the garish tartan choices make poor Effy’s big, fat Highland wedding look like a lock-in at a Royal Mile souvenir shop.
The sylph’s 18 sisters were unfailingly tidy but the sense of otherworldly lightness was missing. Weird women in white are a cornerstone of the romantic and classical repertoires. All serve a broadly similar purpose: a chance for choreographers to amplify themes and demonstrate the sheer magic of repetition and replication. But they aren’t all cut from the same length of tulle; Bournonville’s sylph is not just Odette in a longer frock.
I saw four sylphs. All offered pretty footwork and brisk jumps but, smile and bounce as they might, none had the measure of this childlike, alien creature. The Jameses had been well coached. Isaac Hernández and recent Birmingham signing Joseph Caley relished the flurries of beaten steps and lilting leaps, but the lordly Aitor Arrieta was the only one to give any sense of the Weltschmerz and self-absorption that could drive a bridegroom to run away and play kiss-chase in the woods.
The chief problems lie with the staging by Frank Andersen and Eva Kloborg which, despite its impeccable pedigree, lacks the dramatic force of Johan Kobborg’s 2005 Royal Ballet version. The characters are underwritten, the storytelling seems rushed and arbitrary and key scenes are undersold.
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