Ballet Philippines opens its 55th season with iconic, 192-year-old legend 'La Sylphide' 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 .