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Magisterial Madges
Boston Ballet snares Sorella Englund and Merrill Ashley for La Sylphide
BY IRIS FANGER

As a ballerina with the Royal Danish Ballet, Sorella Englund danced the Sylph in August Bournonville’s 1836 ballet La Sylphide, barely skimming the ground, as if gravity couldn’t hold her. Merrill Ashley, a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet, was known for her technique and her musicality, particularly in the works of NYCB director George Balanchine. Now retired from performing, Englund and Ashley travel the international circuit staging ballets and coaching a new generation of dancers. So it’s quite a coup for Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen to have coaxed them back on stage for the company’s new production of La Sylphide, which opens at the Wang Theatre next Thursday. They’ll share the role of "Madge, a witch," the polar opposite of their former airy and glamorous stage personalities. (Boston Ballet principal Adriana Suárez is the third dancer cast as Madge.)

In Bournonville’s Scottish-set story, it’s the wedding day of James and Effie. An old beggar woman comes to James’s door, but he sends her away. Then James is approached by a woodland Sylph who’s fallen in love with him. Although he tries to resist the temptation, he runs off after her into the forest at the end of act one. The beggar was Madge in disguise, and she’ll take her revenge on both James and the Sylph.

Englund, a tiny, blonde, feminine woman with immaculate posture, has portrayed Madge many times for the Royal Danish Ballet. Described by one critic as "nothing but rags and fury," she’s the role model for Ashley, who never trained as a dramatic ballerina because, as she points out, in the Balanchine ballets, "the steps are saying the emotions." Near the end of her career at NYCB, Ashley was asked to portray bad fairy Carabosse in Peter Martins’s production of The Sleeping Beauty. "When I began to prepare for Carabosse, I watched a video of Sorella as Madge in La Sylphide. It helped me tremendously. Carabosse and Madge are evil ladies. Their hearts are so black. Later, when I was teaching in Denmark, I saw Sorella do the role. I watched the way she used her eyes and the tension in her hands. The face and hands are critically important for a character role. No ballet is ever only about steps. There are moods to create, emotions to express."

For her part, Englund says that when she first played Madge, "there was no one around to tell me who this woman was. I had to make up her story. It was not possible for me to do someone so mean. I had to make up her childhood." Englund imagined Madge as the illegitimate daughter of James’s father and a maid in the house, an outcast because of her birth and born crippled. "She always felt rejected, but she is bright and passionate. She was rejected by someone she loved, so she moved into the forest and lived like a bag lady."

With this biography to guide her, Englund was able to construct the physicality of the character: "her walk, how she uses her stick, her laugh, a big dirty laugh, how your body language works. I have used my own life, but I keep the line between private and personal."

In addition to playing Madge, Englund is staging the ballet, a new production with elaborate new sets and costumes by Peter Cazalet that replaces the Russian-based version of former company artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes. In rehearsal, Englund not only teaches the steps but also explains the characters and the meaning of the ballet. "The dancers must know who they are, why they are there. They shouldn’t just read the story in the program."

Boston Ballet presents La Sylphide March 3 through 6 and 10 through 13 at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District. Tickets are $39 to $96; call (800) 447-7400.


Issue Date: February 25 - March 3, 2005
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