5 hours ago
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A dancer’s debut in one of ballet’s great leading roles is always an event, but it’s particularly notable when that dancer is a first artist – three ranks below principal in ballet’s hierarchy. Twenty-five-year-old Marianna Tsembenhoi is clearly being tipped as a future star and the Royal Ballet’s faith in her looks well placed on the basis of her first outing as tragic peasant girl Giselle.
From her first entrance, buoyant across the stage, the Ukrainian dancer (who came to train in the UK in 2017) impresses with her elevation, as if her weight is barely touching the ground. Tsembenhoi’s bright-eyed, girlish Giselle has the lightness of innocence and goodness. She’s technically a very tidy dancer, with long arms that sway like willow branches.
Tsembenhoi is not the only one making her debut tonight. So is Joseph Sissens as the leading man, Albrecht. This is a hard character to pull off: does Albrecht genuinely love Giselle even though he’s a nobleman engaged to someone else and only posing as a peasant? (Honestly, how did he think this was going to turn out?) Sissens is subtle but has absorbed the innate self-possession of the privileged. He doesn’t need his finery to emanate 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 ekes out the end of a phrase.
Giselle is a coveted role because within the space of two hours she moves from innocence to disbelief, madness, and out into the realm of spirits. Tsembenhoi’s mad scene has the maturity to use stillness to draw our attention in, before unhinging. In the afterlife of act two, her girlishness has vanished, and the neatness of technique that played as simplicity in act one, now reads as quiet resignation. This is not a reinvention of Giselle (à la Natalia Osipova) nor an infinite inner world (see Francesca Hayward), but Tsembenhoi is already confidently her own artist.
The second act is solemn and sorrowful, the wilis (spirits) bewitchingly ghostly and Nadia Mullova-Barley as their queen, Myrtha, has a fantastically stark, still power to her dancing. In a completely contrasting role, Julia Roscoe’s Bathilde – Albrecht’s aristo fiancee – is a deliciously imperious Mean Girl, so enjoyably patronising to poor Giselle. They’re an excellent supporting cast to Tsembenhoi’s fast-rising star.
