Hartford Ballet restores a classic: journey with Giselle

Dance Magazine, April, 1997 by Doris Hering

Zambelli was the ideal teacher of repertory for Haller. She was also petite and had what critic Maurice Brillant termed "feet like golden arrows." By the time Haller went home at the end of that first summer, her head whirled with all she had learned. The following summer she returned to France, this time determined to remain until she had absorbed everything she needed.

Aveline and Zambelli placed Haller at the head of the class, and Aveline eventually sponsored her at the Paris Opera ballet examination. She was accepted as a grand sujet or soloist and soon participated in the Opera's 1924 production of Giselle with Olga Spessivtseva as the doomed heroine. Levinson wrote, "This ballet, created at the Opera, improvised by a French poet for a Milanese danseuse, has since found itself incorporated into the spiritual domain of Russian theatre. A St. Petersburg etoile approaches Giselle with a sort of mystical fervor."

Of Spessivtseva he continued, "From her first appearance, Spessivtseva astonishes and charms. She is a singular and unique being and as such conforms to a certain type of choreographic beauty, that created by Taglioni. Even the elongated and vibrant proportions of Spessivtseva, her human form idealized in the extreme, exaggerate, if possible, the conformation of the seraphic Sylphide. The delicacy, the touching fragility of the new Giselle, reach the point of appearing sickly. But the morbidezza is for this elegiac one an additional attraction. The configuration of her legs, the contour of her instep, are admirable. A simple preparation in Fourth Position is clothed . . . in a very rare beauty . . . Her long, slim legs open with a splendid amplitude. Her delicate pointe easily supports the weight of her body in releves. And the star's arabesque penchee vibrates as long as the string of an Amati."

When Spessivtseva performed Giselle in London eight years later, Marie Rambert added, "Especially memorable were her ballottes in the first act when on each jump her exquisitely arched feet met point to point high in the air and on the slow, soft landing, each leg unfolded meltingly one after the other."

While she possessed the delicacy and subtlety of the French classical style, Spessivtseva epitomized the darker-toned Russian approach, which Haller greatly admired. When the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev arrived in Paris the following year, she longed to study with their teacher, Nicholas Legat. Haller took leave of the Opera, auditioned for the Russian company, and spent a season touring and studying with its artists.

After a subsequent year at the Opera, she returned to the United States and eventually opened a fine school of her own in New Orleans. Kirk Peterson spent ten years under her tutelage, and when he left for New York City in 1968, he was already well versed in the styles that had enriched Giselle. In 1974 Peterson joined American Ballet Theatre, which consistently retained the charming old ballet in its repertory. During the six years he danced with ABT, he was to observe some of the most moving Giselle partnerships of all time: Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland and Baryshnikov. Peterson often danced in the first act Peasant Pas de Deux, and in 1979 performed Albrecht to Marianna Tcherkassky's Giselle.