Dec
6/12 – Giselle
– written in 1841 by Adolphe Adams – I first saw this ballet in
the mid 1950s by the National Ballet of Canada when they were at the
Royal Alexandra Theatre (from 1953 to 1964), with leads being Lois
Smith and David Adams, along with other principal dancers like Earl
Kraul, Hazares Surmejan, Jeremy Blanton, Karen Kain, Veronica Tenant,
Angela Leigh, Martine Van Hamel, Lawrence Adams, Yves Cousineau,
Glenn Gilmour, Howard Marcus, Vanessa Harwood, Frank Augustyn, Eric
Braun, Irene Alpine, Grant Strate, Nadia Potts, Robert Ito, Howard
Meadows all under the wings of the brilliant Celia Franca, who
started the company in 1951. Before that they used the Eaton
Auditorium. This was long before O'Keefe Centre opened, and certainly
many years before the Four Seasons Centre. These were my first
ballets and most of them were not full length but excerpts from full
length ones. Popular ballets were Swan Lake, Orpheus in the
Underworld, Cappelia, a very funny Gala Performance, almost a pre
runner of Ballet de Monte Carlo with ballerinas trying to upstage
each other, and my introduction to ballet. To see this ballet again
at the Four Seasons, a lot of water has since gone under the dam, so
to speak. I am not up to the newer dancers like Naoya Ebe who played
Albrecht, and Jillian Vanstone who played Giselle, but what great
dancers they are. Tremendous rounds of applause for the leads and the
corps de ballet.
