San Francisco's 'Giselle': Precise Yet Passionless

It's not a good sign when the most interesting dancer in "Giselle" is Hilarion, the rough local boy whom Giselle has dumped for that mysterious, good-looking charmer Albrecht. Hilarion is not supposed to outgun Albrecht for our affections. Ordinarily, he serves the purpose meted out to all second fiddles: to prove that no matter how honest and true your intentions, how generous your nature, how plump your offering of freshly killed game, she'll still pass you over for the devastatingly hot Mr. Wrong.

But in the San Francisco Ballet's dull "Giselle," performed over the weekend at the Kennedy Center Opera House, who cared about Giselle, or Albrecht, or Giselle's mother, or the surprise visit by Albrecht's fiancee or any of the other characters who usually get our attention? Encumbered by a curiously languid reading of the Adolphe Adam score, the ballet was cleanly danced by this company of excellent technicians, but it was so clean it was sterile. And so sterile it was boring. Except for Pascal Molat's Hilarion, who wore a beard and a leather jacket and who blustered around like he had some good red blood in his veins. Surely there was a Harley waiting for him in the wings.

But one man in a secondary role can't make a ballet work. This "Giselle," a version of the 19th-century original retooled by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, was as correct as you could wish -- down to the corps de ballet's feet, stretching beautifully in unison as they jumped. On Friday, Maria Kochetkova's Giselle was all delicacy, with exquisitely formed positions and toes of steel. If Joan Boada's Albrecht was more dutiful than charismatic, his high, light entrechats sixes, those jumps with the legs beating together like insect wings, were a wonder.

Yet the production proceeded as a series of dance variations rather than as a piece of theater. As theater, it failed. There was no dramatic tension -- a strange case for a story about betrayal, the agonizing death of innocence, and an eleventh-hour redemption delivered by a ghost.

An example: After Albrecht is revealed as a two-timing playboy and Giselle's heart breaks, her death throes droned on and on -- and on. Even Romeo's long-winded pal Mercutio could have died and risen and died again before Kochetkova's strangely unmoving turn was done. Every Giselle expires to the same amount of music, but here as throughout the ballet, the lack of emotional pull or any kind of momentum made the moment feel flat.

The newly hired and ultra-flexible sensation Taras Domitro tried to inject a bit of spirit into the Peasant Pas de Cinq, throwing some kind of wild, unattractive ninja move into his solo, which he spilled out of rather untidily. Perhaps in horror at his mistake, his four colleagues played it excruciatingly safe. This was a virtuoso showcase devoid of pizazz.

Tomasson is justifiably one of the ballet world's most admirable directors, but his strength is also a weakness. He has built a company of uniformly skilled dancers who excel in the predominantly plotless works of George Balanchine and other contemporary choreographers. Yet developing dancers who grab us with their passions is not a strong point. I've seen juicy characters emerge from this company in works tailor-made for them by others. But this "Giselle" had no fire. The dancers were so busy being careful and neat they forgot that the ballet is about disaster.