Rating: 
Summary: Delightful Dancing
Review: This was the first ballet DVD that I ever bought, and I couldn't have asked for much more. For some unfortunate reason, this title is not currently available in VHS format, so don't let the lack of reviews in the customer review forum fool you. As DVD becomes more and more fully entrenched in the consumer market, I predict that this title will begin to accumulate a number of glowing customer reviews from balletomanes--it's that good.This is a production of "Giselle" by American Ballet Theatre. The music is by Adolphe Adam, and it is played by the Orchester Der Deutschen Oper Berlin, conducted by John Lanchbery. The choreography is by David Blair, after Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli. The principal dancers are Carla Fracci as Giselle, Erik Bruhn as Albrecht, Bruce Marks as Hilarion, and Toni Lander as Myrtha. Neither Fracci nor Bruhn are widely recorded, so this is your opportunity to see a couple of distinguished dancers from the past. This was originally a feature film by Hugo Nieberling in 1969. The performances are especially polished, because they were done in a studio setting, not during a live performance. The performances are also strong from a theatrical standpoint, and Fracci's acting ability is on par with other great ballerinas, such as Dame Margot Fonteyn and Maya Plisetskaya. This videotape is clearly filmed, and the dancing is captured from many unique angles. Some of them are highly interesting, but there are others that I could have done without. The director seems to change angles a lot, particularly during the scenes with a lot of tension. A number of special effects are used, some of which are pretty neat. The set is custom, and there's a lot of color used. If you scroll back up to the top of the product page, you can see a picture of the wilis dancing in the forest at midnight. For some strange reason, they decided that the lighting and costumes should be light green and light yellow. I'm not real crazy about that choice, but at least Fracci wears the usual pure white wedding dress. This title is ninety minutes long, and the video aspect ratio is 4:3. Overall, I believe that the good Hollywood filmic touches outweigh the bad ones. There's some really delightful petit allegro dancing recorded here by Fracci, Bruhn and Landers, and the musical tempos are on the quick side to facilitate this. Out of the six different productions of "Giselle" that I've seen to date, act one from this ballet is the best of them. Act two is good, but not quite as good as the 1979 Bolshoi version with Natalia Bessmertnova, Mikhail Lavrovsky and Galina Kozlova (which is also available from Amazon.com), because Bolshoi wilis dance with unbelievable finesse, delicacy and precision. Fracci and Bruhn's partnering is nice, but the husband and wife team of Lavrovsky and Bessmertnova exude more tenderness together. However, fans of Hilarion will be happy to know that they didn't try to make him out to be some kind of dork here, and they even gave him a substantial variation in the second act. I've tried to draw a few distinctions between these two outstanding performances of "Giselle," but it's difficult for me to pick an overall favorite--I enjoy and recommend them both! For those of you who have the book "101 Stories of the Great Ballets" by George Balanchine and Francis Mason, there's a very interesting reprint on pp. 207-209 from an article by Erik Bruhn entitled 'Beyond Technique' from "Dance Perspectives." The excerpt is to long to quote here, but for those of you who are willing to do some research, you might find his ideas about this ballet and his portrayal of Albrecht to be very interesting. A customer review of "101 Stories" also appears on my Amazon.com member page, which you can visit by clicking on "rss28" above. I've watched this ballet a number of times since purchasing it, and I think that it's some of the best money that I've spent on my ballet collection. The petit allegro dancing here is delightful, and the only other ballet that I can think of with such outstanding footwork is "La Sylphide" (1971, Kultur Video) by the Paris Opera Ballet with Ghislaine Thesmar and Michel Denard. If you have a DVD player, I definitely think that you are going to want to have this ballet in your collection. If you don't yet have a DVD player, then maybe now is the time to buy one!
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