The real star of the Paris Opera Ballet is the corps. The company — the best-schooled in the world — is back in New York for its first visit since 1996. At Saturday night’s performance of “Giselle,” the lead dancers were formidable, but the ensemble of ladies grabbed the applause.
“Giselle” is a Paris original, first performed there in 1841. This version was created 150 years later, in 1991, but sticks close to the traditional tale of a two-timing nobleman and the peasant girl who saves his life from beyond the grave. The rustic cottage set, based on a 1924 production, is as cheesy as a Thomas Kinkade painting, but the dancing is as stylish as a Dior gown.
The leads, Albrecht and Giselle, were performed by the husband-and-wife pair Nicolas Le Riche and Clairemarie Osta. She’s petite, with a lovely jump, and looks beautiful when suspended in a picture-perfect balance, either alone or expertly assisted by Le Riche.
He daringly plays Albrecht as so self-absorbed that he can’t see his part in Giselle’s death until the finger is pointed at him — literally — by a rival. From that troubled moment, he grows up and becomes a man.
The Parisians tell the story clearly but coolly; they don’t live it out onstage. The orchestra plays briskly, sometimes too fast for emotions to sink in. A near-knifing goes straight into a Happy Peasant dance with scarcely a breath. Before you know it, Giselle is halfway into her mad scene.
But oh, that magnificent corps. Those women in white arrange in lines as manicured as the gardens of Versailles, and form exquisite groupings that look like a 19th-century lithograph come to life. Even in pointe shoes, their feet are so supple and strong that it seems as if they could use their toes to peel grapes — or crack walnuts.
Their synchronization is a world apart from the Rockettes’. They’ve danced together since they were schoolchildren. Every arm movement, every tilt of the head — it’s all done not just the same, but the same way. At the end of their big dance, the audience spontaneously erupted into bravos.
Osta, one of the company’s senior ballerinas, will dance Giselle one last time Thursday as her farewell performance. On an occasion that momentous, you can be sure the corps won’t steal the show.