Ballet Philippines president Maymay Liechtenstein describes La Sylphide as “a relatable ballet about love, emotion, magic, and ethereal feelings. It’s also incredibly lyrical and easy to fall in love with.” But I wasn’t particularly moved by its music.
It took me some time to realize that the continuity of the score—interminable, unending—which in parts I found exasperating, seemed to drive home the message I gleaned from La Sylphide, considered one of the oldest surviving romantic ballets, first staged at the Paris Opera in 1832, and its timeless themes of burning, overwhelming desire, betrayal, abandonment, and a heart broken by impossible longing.
The message does need to be driven to me, if not drilled into my thick skull, as it needs to be forced into those of many others in this world of self-inflicted heartbreaks: Never chase the impossible. What is in front of you is way, way better, more real than what is beyond your reach.
Is this what they had in mind when they created La Sylphide, first by Italian choreographer Filippo Taglioni, with a libretto by French operatic tenor and composer Adolphe Nourrit, then by Danish ballet legend August Bournonville, with new composition made by Norwegian-born Danish composer Herman Severin von Løvenskiold, and then this version I just saw staged by Ballet Philippines under the artistic direction of Misha Martynyuk to open its 55th season at the Theater at Solaire in Parañaque City, replete with some Filipino tweaks highlighting our cultural penchant for mysticism and romance?
But does the moral of La Sylphide caution us against illusions, delusions, our taste for the impossible, unreachable, unownable?
A farmer, James Ruben, abandons his bride-to-be, Effie, on their wedding day in the pursuit of a sylph, an imaginary, an elemental, a spirit of the air. Following him on his mad chase for the unachievable, as he, prompted by a witch named Madge, goes after her through the forest, is this lamentation on wasted emotions, a longing never quenched, a tragedy, which is what La Sylphide is, a tragic tale not only for the farmer, but also the sylph, as well Effie, at least until she is saved by the romantic revelations of Gürn, who, in a twist relatable to many, happens to be James’ best friend, in whom he first confides about the apparition of love in the form of a fairy of the forest.
But La Sylphide is fantastic, the dancing exquisite. The feet of the dancers are soft and light that I imagine them not making a thud as they land on the stage floor. Along with the footwork, a celebrated specialty of what is known in the ballet circles as the Bournonville style of ballet, grace and eloquence, neither spectacle nor ostentation, appear to be the main objects of the port de bras and the épaulement and the smooth transitions between demi pointe and pointe in La Sylphide, the better to tell such a nuanced story not only in dance, but also in mime, in acting, in the changing of mood and atmosphere, in gestures big and small suggesting flight or dejection, in the glowering of the eyes (that can be seen even from afar), in the heaving of shoulders to exaggerate, for instance, a cruel, sardonic laugh.
Although La Sylphide isn’t as mainstream as it should have been, even among ballet aficionados, this 192-year-old ballet legend holds many records. It was the first ballet, for instance, to be entirely performed en pointe. It was also the pioneer of the tutu, the diaphanous, light-as-air ballet skirt, iconic to this dance form, crafted from tulle.
The music, the more I think about it, serves its purpose, castigating me for keeping my illusions on loop in my heart, playing constantly, interminably, unendingly in my head.
I don’t know if this is what they mean by mad love, crazy love, but in La Sylphide, love is so crazy it is fatal, maybe in real life too.
La Sylphide launches the theme of the 55th season of Ballet Philippines—Relevé, a word that in ballet means to rise onto the tips of the toes. Its limited run this month, from Aug. 9 to 11, came ahead of the production of Peter Pan, slated for the holidays, Dec. 6, 7, and 8, to transport Filipino viewers to a reimagined, boundary-bending Neverland, and the season finale, Ang Panaginip, an offbeat fairytale celebrating the many faces of the Filipina and the complexity of Philippine culture, which will run from Feb. 28 to March 2, 2025.