Ballet's biggest f*ckboys
There aren’t a lot of good men in ballet. If you want a starring role in one of the great classical story ballets, you better be ready to play a man who falls in love with a swan and then cheats on her (Swan Lake), a fairly dull prince (Sleeping Beauty), a man who cheats on his fiancée with a woodland fairy (La Sylphide), a man who falls in love with a lifelike doll (Coppélia) or a homicidal and suicidal teenager (Romeo and Juliet).
Men in ballet are inconstant, unreliable, and generally shitty. They cannot be trusted to show up, or stay faithful, or refraining from lusting after -- and then killing -- a forest fairy (that’s La Sylphide again). In short, classical ballet is rife with fuckboys.
But no one is a bigger fuckboy than Duke Albrecht, the hero of Giselle. He is the worst.
A quick plot summary: Albrecht is a Duke with a fiancée, and Giselle, unbeknownst to her, is his peasant sidechick. He’s has disguised himself as a peasant in order to fool around with her, and when she finds out the truth, she goes mad and dies of a broken heart (in some productions, she stabs herself with his royal sword). Then, when he visits her grave, he’s set upon by a gang of Wilis, which are the spirits of betrothed women who died before their wedding days. They like to corner men in the woods and make them dance until they die. Basically it’s a murderous sorority of virgin ghosts, led by the queen of the woodland incels, Myrtha. She and her gang try to kill Albrecht with dancing, but Giselle, now a Wili, is full of forgiveness and love for him -- even though his fuckery got her killed. She begs Myrtha for mercy and manages to keep him alive. Then he goes back to his castle and marries his royal fiancée. But he, like, feels super bad about what he did.
This is, perhaps, an uncharitable description of Albrecht, who I’ve seen danced in a way that conveys real love for Giselle and genuine regret for his betrayal (I recommend this 2005 performance, by Italian superstar Roberto Bolle -- it’ll start just as Albrecht’s about to get busted by the arrival in Giselle’s village of a bunch of royals, who recognize him). There’s a famous scene in the second act in which the dancer playing Albrecht has to complete 35 difficult entrechat six jumps, and they all have to be precisely the same height and amplitude, and they have to look both effortless and like they’re killing him. When Bolle does it, he looks like he’s on a pogo stick. Playing Albrecht is hard, and playing him as a sympathetic character is harder, but it can be done.
But gorgeous dancing and compelling acting aside, it doesn’t change the fact that Albrecht does a shitty thing, and that his life is then saved by the bottomless love and compassion of the woman he did the shitty thing to. (Not in all productions, though; in South African choreographer Dada Masilo’s adaptation, Giselle lets Albrecht die, and then steps over his dead body and into the light.)
There are lots of ways to read Giselle. Is it a story about the aristocratic class screwing the peasants? A tale of true love thwarted by a rigid class system? A lesson about the power of love to overcome death and forgive the unforgivable? Sure, it can be all those things. But it is also a story about a fuckboy who gets away with it.
And, unfortunately, while Albrecht might be the worst man in ballet, he’s just one of many who screws over the woman he supposedly loves. You can’t trust a man in ballet. Might as well join a virgin ghost girl gang and call it a day.
The research
Here’s the weirdest thing I found in the library this week, in Peter Stoneley’s A Queer History of the Ballet. Please do not attempt this recipe at home.
Dancers you should know about
Each week, I’m going to recommend a dancer you should follow on Instagram, if you’re on Instagram. Of all the social media platforms, Instagram has been the best for dancers -- unsurprising, given how visual dance is -- and Ballet Instagram is… a whole thing, and a topic for another newsletter.
For now, I recommend you follow Sean Aaron Carmon, a former Alvin Ailey company member who’s now choreographing and performing in the national tour of The Lion King. I interviewed him in 2016, about his career and his role as a union delegate standing up for dancers’ rights on the job.
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