Courage and Commitment: Mullikin, the Nashville Ballet, and Giselle
Part I: The Lead-in
Muhammad Ali once said “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” Ably preceded by the example of director emeritus Paul Vasterling, current Nashville Ballet artistic director Nick Mullikin exhibits that courage in his first full-length ballet choreography. Dedicated to a staunch defender of the arts, the recently deceased philanthropist Martha Rivers Ingram, Mullikin’s Giselle celebrates Ingram and her years of commitment to the vision that became the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), while acting on his own commitment to the vision of choreographing his singular version of the canonical ballet. On Thursday afternoon September 24, the Ballet’s Relevé Society hosted a preview of Mullikin’s achievement at the Martin Center. (Note: All photos from a previous performance. featured photo: Heather Thorne)
Giselle, or the Wilis premiered in June of 1841, set to music of Adolphe Adam. Incorporating two popular Romantic era themes—the power of loving sacrifice and the supernatural—this ballet has remained an international classic since its opening. Its international bonafides began at the premiere in France, featuring an Italian prima ballerina, dancing a tale from a German writer’s essays. Now it evolves with an American choreographer’s touch.
The story is taken in part from Heinrich Heine’s historical triptych published in France as D’Allemagne depuis Luther (Germany after Luther). But Adam’s story of the Wilis also borrows from Victor Hugo’s “Fantômes” a thirty-stanza poem that forms part of his collection, Les Orientales. In this telling, a village maiden named Giselle is courted by a stranger Loys, supposedly from another village. But Loys is actually disguised nobleman Duke Albrecht, already engaged to another duke’s daughter, Bathilde.
Two local villagers worry about Giselle: her mother, who knows her daughter loves to dance but has a heart condition, and Hilarion, a local gamekeeper who loves her. Hilarion is the one who discovers Albrecht’s deception when a royal hunting party comes near the village. Bathilde is with them. In her agony at Albrecht’s betrayal, Giselle dances herself to death. That’s part one.
After her death, a coterie of dead maidens, called the Wilis, approach Giselle’s spirit. These maidens, all dressed in white, have been heartbroken, left at the wedding altar, and buried in their wedding dresses. Led by Myrtha, they urge Giselle to join them as they hunt down and kill young men, regardless of whether they have jilted a woman or not. They find Hilarion at Giselle’s grave and kill him. But when they approach Albrecht, who has also come to weep at her grave, Giselle, defends him, saving his soul and allowing hers to rest in peace.
To retell this remarkable tale, Mullikin borrows parts of the original choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, but makes it his own, highlighting the particular strengths of his home dance company. The youth and physicality of the Nashville Ballet fuse with their willingness to step outside the boundaries of the strictly classical to make this performance distinctive.
Mullikin adapts the story with fearlessness and respect. He adds more challenges for male dancers, whose roles in the original are mainly as lifters for the ballerinas, but he also adds a solo for Myrtha, queen of the Wilis and for Bathilde who was betrayed by her fiancé, Albrecht. And, for those who know the original ballet, be prepared for additional music and plot surprises at the ending.
Part II of my 2-part series on this groundbreaking event will discuss dance specifics from rehearsal to performance. The four Nashville Ballet performances of Giselle, accompanied by the Nashville Symphony, will take place in TPAC’s James Polk Theatre on October 2–4. For more on the Relevé Society, a group of enthusiastic NB supporters, see here.
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
