Odyssey Dance Theatre takes a risk with 'Giselle'

Odyssey Dance Theatre's artistic director is taking a risk with the well-known classical ballet "Giselle."

Former Ballet West principal dancer Derryl Yeager knows the work, made famous through the staging of Marius Petipa, and he knew if he was going to revamp it, he had better do more research.

"I always found the story to be interesting," Yeager said during a phone call from the company's stop in Riverside, Calif.

"I mean the main character goes insane, and that's interesting to me. But there were things that I really wanted to understand. So I found the original traditional tale and I saw things in a new light."

One of the first things that Yeager noticed was the Willies, the mysterious characters that force the character Hilarion to dance himself to death, were originally vampires.

"I had always thought the Willies were these strange flying things," said Yeager. "But when I found out they were first vampires, it made more sense to me."

Yeager decided to bring "Giselle" into the modern day, to help people who aren't familiar with the story "understand it better."

"We all have read about the class struggles in the past," he said. "And sometimes it gets a little difficult to follow. So I decided to make the character of Giselle a coffee-shop employee and the nobleman, Albrecht, a movie star."

That, said Yeager, will hopefully help people understand the degrees of separation between the two ill-fated characters.

"And another scene which is known as the peasant pas de deux in the original always confused me," said Yeager.

"All of a sudden there was this pas de deux that seemingly comes out of nowhere. But in my research I found out that the pas de deux was put in there because the person funding the original production wanted his girlfriend to have a solo. So that's how that happened."

In Yeager's version, the peasant pas de deux is set in a fitness center. And the pas de deux dancers have been tranformed into personal trainers.

"It was just something that popped into my mind," said Yeager with a laugh.

Yeager said his version of "Giselle" is the same story and uses the same Adolphe Adam score. It's just done in a way that makes it easier to understand.

"I know the purists will have some fits, but I think it will be a fun production."