At Virginia Ballet Company and School, students have the opportunity to perform in two full-length classical ballets per year: Nutcracker in December and another production in the spring. This year, our spring show is the VBC premiere of La Fille Mal Gardée. As we gear up for our tech week and production on April 12, we thought we’d raise the curtain on what it takes to stage a new production.
La Fille Mal Gardée: A wealth of choreography
Classical Artistic Director Dina Fadeyeva began the process of adapting La Fille Mal Gardée by reviewing the different choreography developed over the years. In this case, there was a lot to review.
Pierre-Antoine Baudouin’s painting, which inspired La Fille Mal Gardée.
The ballet has quite a long history, having first been staged in July 1789 in France, just before the storming of the Bastille. That version was inspired by the 1765 Pierre-Antonin Baudouin painting, La réprimande/Une jeune fille querellée par sa mère (“The reprimand: A young girl argues with her mother”). The production was called Le ballet de la paille or The Ballet of the Straw with original choreography by French ballet master Jean D’Auberval. A decade later, it was staged in Russia with choreography by Charles Didelot. It continued to evolve under Russian direction and was revived in 1885 with new choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov and music by Peter Ludwig Hertel.
In 1960, the ballet premiered at the Royal Opera House in England with new choreography by Frederick Ashton as well as some new music by composer John Lanchbery, including the chicken dance and Widow Simone’s iconic clog dance.
Adapting the show to available talent
After reviewing all of the available recordings, Ms. Fadeyeva incorporated choreography by Petipa, Ivanov and Ashton in VBC’s version. VBC productions have a dual purpose: to bring high-caliber classical ballet to the community and to provide an excellent, thorough dance education to our students. In order to accomplish both parts of our mission, the choreography had to be arranged to provide educational value to the student performers. Care also had to be taken to ensure sufficient stage time for all participating dancers. In this case, that involved melding some elements of the Petipa/Ivanov staging and the Ashton staging to create an entirely new second appearance of the chickens, danced by Beginning Ballet 3 students.
Instructor Vera Kudinova leads dancers cast as chickens in new choreography developed especially for VBC’s production of La Fille Mal Gardée.
Another adaptation occurs in the second act, where some of Lise’s friends dance a waltz with the gentlemen farmers. This waltz is new choreography by Ms. Fadeyeva which is set to music that appeared only in the Russian staging.
“I need to keep developing the skills of students,” Ms. Fadeyeva said. “This is a good opportunity not just for one or two leads, but for 10 girls to work with the gentlemen in rehearsal and practice their pas de deux skills for future performances.”
Dancers practice the brand-new waltz choreographed by Ms. Fadeyeva for VBC’s production of La Fille Mal Gardee.
In order to adapt the ballet for our students and stage requirements, the production was also divided into three acts instead of the customary two. Other parts were deleted in order to be able to incorporate the waltz and the new chicken appearance without lengthening the total production time.
“I cut the gentlemen variation from the first act because we don’t have the necessary gentlemen and I need to develop the students,” Ms. Fadeyeva said. “So we deleted that one, and included a dance that the students will do instead.”
Prop development for La Fille Mal Gardée
Once Ms. Fadeyeva’s vision was complete, it was time to think about props. Old pieces were dug out of storage and given new life. When the curtain rises, audience members will see the facade of VBC’s Coppelia house, built by VBC volunteers decades earlier. In the third act, the same facade is artfully transformed into the interior of the house. Thanks to a donation from Long Fence, some wooden fence rails will also grace the stage, bringing the audience further into the rural farmyard illusion.
The Coppelia house awaits its return to the stage in VBC’s premiere of La Fille Mal Gardée.
One of the trademarks of La Fille Mal Gardée is the maypole dance. As VBC did not own a maypole, one had to be constructed. Props Manager Liz Carroll spent about a week conceiving and constructing the piece early in production—using an old ballet barre, a hula hoop, and 400 feet of ribbon—so that dancers could practice with it.
Dancers practice with the newly built maypole while rehearsing La Fille Mal Gardée.
Another puzzle was figuring out how to provide sickles for the farm workers to dance with. You can’t just buy prop sickles in bulk, so VBC’s are made of wire wreath frames, ducts tape and plungers.
Perhaps we’ve said too much … after all, the illusion is part of the magic of a life production. But we are so excited about the premiere of La Fille Mal Gardée that we couldn’t resist giving you a peek behind the scenes. And of course, along with choreography and props, a ballet also requires costumes. Check back on Monday for another blog post with some sneak peeks into our new costumes. And in the meantime, get your tickets to our show on April 12 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. here!