Giselle Returns to Paris

Fluffy tutus, pointe shoes, white gauze, tulle: Giselle marks the pinnacle of romanticism. In a bucolic landscape, a young girl dies of love and is transformed into a spirit who lives in the forest. Collected by the Villi (restless spirits of girls who died before their wedding), Giselle enters an otherworldly and immaterial dimension where dance is the language that speaks to the soul. Her lover Albrecht, distraught, chases Giselle's ghost at the risk of his own life. The dancers, with their aerial presence, play with it as much as with gravity. Shrouded in fog, the scene gives way to ghostly visions amplified by Adolphe Adam's captivating music. Presented at the Royal Academy of Music on 28 June 1841, the ballet traveled to Russia and disappeared from the repertoire before its return to France in 1910. It is today in the version by Patrice Bart and Eugène Polyakov, faithful to the choreography of the original work.