'Sylphide': A Nuanced Triumph

"La Sylphide" changed ballet history. And even now, nearly 180 years after its ballerinas rose onto their toes for the first time and modified ballet forever upward, this work's transformative powers haven't dimmed: It might yet change the Washington Ballet.

At the very least, this production, which opened Thursday at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, accounted for one of the happiest Washington Ballet premieres in recent years. It is not only an artistic achievement for the dancers, whose enjoyment of the work's softer dimensions is palpable, but it also represents a resounding show of authority by Artistic Director Septime Webre, who had the wisdom to bring in experts from the Royal Danish Ballet to stage the ballet and to immerse his dancers in a generous rehearsal period so they could absorb the myriad details that make this romantic tale feel vital and fresh.

Webre also delivered a valentine to those fortunate enough to see American Ballet Theatre principal dancer David Hallberg, who performed the leading role of James on opening night with enthralling sensitivity and will dance in the ballet's last performance tomorrow afternoon.

It's been a long while since I've seen a ballet I wished I could watch all over again, right away, that pulsed with so much living detail that I hated each scene to end even as I was eager for the next one. It's not only that "La Sylphide" -- retooled by Danish choreographer August Bournonville in 1836, after the original French version -- is a brilliant morality tale of duty and passion, and an evil so terrifyingly familiar that you wonder whether Bournonville wasn't channeling one of the despots who would make the world bleed in the century to come. That alone isn't the reason the ballet succeeds, nor is it solely due to Hallberg's great expressive and technical gifts. (Those yeasty jumps! I cannot get them out of my mind.)

Along with story and stardom, what made the evening so powerful was the energized consciousness of the whole cast, its evolving understanding of the world it was creating with those Scottish reels and mime passages. (I say evolving because every element is not yet in place; some of the folk dancing had the snap of a jota.) For this, thank the guidance of the Royal Danish Ballet stagers, famed former ballerina Sorella Englund (who, on Thursday, also played Madge, a vicious, sensual witch) and principal dancer Thomas Lund. The dancers' sustained lightness, especially in the corps, and their musicality and alertness -- the Danes' influence might well extend beyond this ballet.

This ballet is old -- one of the oldest in existence -- but it feels real, and that was the essential triumph of the Washington Ballet's production. Hallberg's James, a Scottish laird whose mixed feelings about convention are awakened on his wedding day by a winged, vaporous Sylph, showed us heartbreak, confusion and exhilaration with equal conviction. Elizabeth Gaither's Sylph was deeply appealing -- giddy as a child, warmer than any of the mortal women -- but she was no innocent in drawing James to her side. As James's fiancee, Effie, Laura Urgellés steered Hallberg with a firm hand, and helped make it clear that this ballet has more to do with personal will than with Scotland and its fairy myths. James's every desire is thwarted by Effie in the first act: He wants to send creepy Madge packing after she sneaks into his house, but Effie stops him. His temper rises again and again; Effie is always there to douse it. Even James's mother (former Washington Ballet member Kristina Windom) steps in to tell him when it's time to do this or that. So when James finally escapes into the heather with the Sylph, it's a blazing act of independence, and our 21st-century egos go with him. Isn't every entrepreneur a romantic, chasing a dream?

You could say the ballet ends in film-noir territory, with the Sylph dead in his arms after James is duped by Madge, that heartless dame. (Englund's Madge is a chilling sadist, and it is one of the great character-dancer performances of our age.) Except that instead of a despairing death alone on a rain-slicked street, James suffers a despairing death alone in the woods, with an uncaring world -- Effie, newly married to James's friend Gurn -- parading by, oblivious.

Hallberg's way of dying, however, makes him a hero. It was a sudden confrontation with the inevitable, a willful act, the choice of darkness over any more pain. It hurt to watch, which is just what you want a tragedy to do.

Scott Speck conducted Herman Severin Lovenskiold's music, with one of the more moving overtures in all ballet, so sad, dark and full of rustic elegance.

The evening had a rousing counterpoint in Lila York's "Celts," which carried the British Isles theme in a vigorous direction. York created it in 1996, soon after "Riverdance" crashed onto the scene, and it's the superior paean to Irish step dancing, with all the high bounding, the flicking forelegs, the ecstatic fiddling and none of the clattering. There were a couple of terrific, bouncy showpieces for guest artist Joel Prouty (he also played Gurn in "La Sylphide"), and all manner of bubbly energy was let loose from the bottle.