The Royal New Zealand Ballet has created a dynamic new education resource for New Zealand teachers, students and classrooms based on the company's production of La Sylphide. Leaping out from its pages are ideas for students and teachers to create dance in their own classrooms and the opportunity to explore the RNZB through the exploration of its classical and contemporary ballets. This resource is written for primary, intermediate and secondary teachers and their students.
We encourage you to immerse yourself in the information provided as it progresses over the next few weeks, view the video footage, print off handouts for your class groups and complement your study of La Sylphide by attending the production at one of our 8 touring centres over the next two months.
We encourage students working through the resource to comment on each of the resource pages. Use this space to answer the focus questions, comment on the video footage and/or tell us your experiences from studying or viewing La Sylphide.
Teachers are encouraged to comment on this page. Commence a dialogue with other teachers using the work in their classrooms, ask questions about the works, comment on the live performance that you attend or request further information from Education staff. We look forward to hearing from you.
We would like to thank Jan Bolwell for her expertise in writing this resource, Julian Ward for his fabulous video footage of the dancers in rehearsal and in performance this season. To Matz Skoog and the RNZB dancers for allowing us to film you at work.
LA SYLPHIDE
La Sylphide first appeared on stage on the 12 March 1832 at the Paris Opera. A ballet in 2 acts, it was choreographed by Philippe Taglioni to a libretto by Adolphe Nourrit with music by Schneitzhoeffer.
The ballet was created as a vehicle for Taglioni’s talented daughter Marie who danced the role of the sylph. She plays the airy sprite that seduces a young Scottish farmer, James on the eve of his marriage to Effie. He leaves his bride and his friends and follows the sylph into a mystical forest.
To bind him to this creature forever he accepts a magic shawl from the witch Madge. When he puts it around the sylph’s shoulders however, her wings fall off and she dies.
In the finale the wedding party makes its way to church. Effie, spurned by James, is about to marry his best friend Gurn, whom she had previously rejected.
Ballet history was changed forever by this work. It began the era of the romantic ballet which the saw the ascendancy of women on the ballet stage.
The signature elements of romantic ballet were sylphs, swans, firebirds, elves and wilis. It was a mix of reality and fantasy in settings that were both natural and ethereal. Ballet was dominated by these strange and mysterious creatures for the next two decades, and the influence of La Sylphide in particular was widespread throughout Europe and the United States.
It had all the elements which defined romanticism: exoticism (the setting was in Scotland which seemed exotic to Parisians!), the ghostly presence of the sylphs, and the seeking towards an ideal and therefore, impossible, love.
From 1830 onwards for the next two decades the Romantic Movement dominated all western arts. This was in response to the profound changes wrought in Europe by the Industrial revolution, the French revolution at the end of the 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century. Formal classicism gave way to feeling, and sensibility as poets, painters, novelists and composers allowed their emotional responses to the world around them to influence their art. Ballet was also greatly affected by what was happening in the other arts.
The Rise of the Ballerina
Pas de Quatre
The famous lithograph the Pas de Quatre epitomises the spirit of the romantic ballet.
Marie Taglioni stands on pointe surrounded by Fanny Cerrito, Carlotta Grisi and Lucile Grahn.
Although it does not appear so to us today, this was a revolutionary image.
It shows softly flowing tulle costumes, a dancer on pointe to show ethereal lightness, and not a male dancer in sight!
These four famous dancers began an era in dance that was dominated by the ballerina. They epitomised the desire of the age to escape from the real world, to escape from a life that was for many ‘nasty, brutal and short.’
The Bournonville Version of La Sylphide
Auguste Bouronville
In Paris Bournonville saw Marie Taglioni dancing in La Sylphide. Two years later in
1836 he staged his own version of La Sylphide in Copenhagen with music by Lovenskjold for his gifted pupil Lucile Grahn. This version is still in the repertory of the Royal Danish Ballet.
Bournonville was one of the greatest choreographers of the Romantic age whose ballets are still greatly revered today.
Born in Copenhagen in 1805, he studied in Paris under Vestris, absorbing all the fundamentals of the French style of ballet.
In 1829 he returned to Copenhagen and in 1830 took charge of the Royal Danish Ballet. Over the next 47 years he created a great dance company and a great repertoire of dances.
