The Royal Ballet: Giselle Review – Mariana Tsimpinhoy soars in an indelible debut | Dance

A A dancer’s debut in one of ballet’s great leading roles is always an event, but it is especially notable when that dancer is a senior artist—three ranks below principal in the ballet hierarchy. Twenty-five-year-old Mariana Tsimpinhoy is clearly tipped as a future star, and the Royal Ballet’s faith in her seems well placed on the basis of her debut as the tragic peasant girl Giselle.

From her first entrance, floating on stage, the Ukrainian dancer (who came to train in the UK in 2017) dazzled with her height, as if her weight was barely touching the ground. Giselle, the bright-eyed girl from Tsembenhoi, has a lightness of innocence and goodness. She is technically a very elegant dancer, with long arms that sway like willow branches.

Tsembenhoi isn’t the only one making her debut tonight. And also Joseph Sisnes as leading man Albrecht. This is a difficult character to realize: does Albrecht really love Giselle even though he is a gentleman engaged to someone else and only pretends to be a peasant? (Honestly, how did he think this would end?) Sissens is cunning, but he has internalized the innate self-possession of the privileged. He doesn’t need to be pretentious to exude the quiet confidence of someone who always gets what he wants. He cares for Giselle, and his dancing is full of care, too—the tightly fluttering beats of his feet, the way he draws out the end of a phrase.

Giselle is a desirable role because in the space of two hours she goes from innocence to disbelief, madness and out into the spirit world. Tsembenhoi’s crazy scene has the maturity to use stillness to capture our attention, before we disintegrate. In the afterlife of Act II, her girlhood has disappeared, and the precision of technique that played the role of simplicity in Act I is now read as quiet surrender. This is neither a reinvention of Giselle (à la Natalia Osipova) nor an infinite inner world (see Francesca Hayward), but Tsimbinhwe is already an artist of her own.

The second act is solemn and sad, the Willis (the spirits) are charmingly ghostly, and Nadia Molova-Barley as their queen, Mirtha, has a fantastical power that remains in her dancing. In a completely contradictory role, Julia Roscoe plays Bathilde – Albrecht’s aristocratic fiancée – a deliciously haughty mean girl, who amusingly patronizes poor Giselle. They are an excellent support team for Tsembenhoi’s fast rising star.