Giselle and Me

Performance at JOMBA! 24 as part of OPEN HORIZONS.

Giselle is a peasant girl, who by the way has a problem with her heart, who falls in love with a duke who is pretending to be poor peasant - who is actually engaged to someone else by the way - who then finds out this duke has been cheating on her, so goes mad and has a famous ‘mad scene’, who then dies because all of this stresses her heart out, who then joins some lady ghosts who haunt men by making them dance to death, who then want to make the duke dance to his death also, but Giselle intervenes and saves this duke from dying...

So, I have a big problem with this Ballet.

Leaving the poor girl meets rich boy who is cheating on her vibe...and that girls when they are angry they are evil ghosts... (Oh by the way, the lady ghosts are all single women... sigh...)

This is a ballet that has dancers interviewed on how they prepared for the mad scene – like did you go to a mental asylum to see how mad people are...

This is a ballet that has reviewers using words like psychotic, suicidal, contortions, bipolar, oh and don’t forget to mention the hair coming undone when she goes mad...because this is what mad people do.

This is a ballet that needs to be called out for its representation of madness – its mad scene.

And I say this as someone who has Bipolar, who is mad, who see representations of what it is to be mad performed in this ballet, and how it reinforces stereotypes of people like me.
So, I got mad about this and when I get mad, I dance...coz maybe Giselle is me...