Giselle at Queen Elizabeth Theatre

The highly anticipated World Premiere by Resident Choreographer José Navas revives the well-known, romantic story of Giselle for a 21st century dance audience. Inspired by the original Adolphe Adam score, Montreal-based Navas creates a riveting world that comments on the story’s universal themes of love, heartbreak and revenge that continue to resonate today. This innovative reworking of the full-length classic is a collaboration between Montreal set designer Lino, lighting designer Marc Parent, Vancouver costume designer Linda Chow and the Arts Umbrella Graduate Dance Program.

“This production arises from the exciting challenge of how to tell a well-known, romantic story in dance for our society today. My creative desire with this new production of Giselle is not driven by the ambition of realism, the aim is not to persuade the audience they are seeing real people called Giselle, Albrecht and Hilarion. Instead, the performers will be telling the story to the audience. As in some theatre productions, there will be a stage within the stage and the audience will see the performers undergoing the transformation from ordinary person on the outer stage, to the character in the ballet, moving to the inner stage...the audience’s experience of the dance is rendered more, not less, intense by seeing an ordinary human being in between the periods of dance. This production will embody my conviction that classical or classically influenced ballet need not look old-fashioned. We can keep faith with the rich historical tradition of ballet by using structure, form and its movements. The production will tell the story through elements that are the narrative equivalents in our contemporary urban lives.”