Ever notice how each act of Giselle mirrors the other?

This is probably old hat to many (or even both) of my readers, but I've always been struck by the many similarities between Act I and Act II of Giselle, how they're slightly altered, mirror versions of each other. In other art forms, Act II would be the Bizarro version of Act I, or everyone in Act II would sport silly goatees. (And wouldn't we love to see a Superman or Star Trek penned by Gautier: "Quelle est cette chose appelée l'amour?" Green-skinned wilis?)

I'm not going to dig into Gautier's original libretto, that has Albrecht and Bathilde reunited as the sun rises. It gets too complicated, and it's almost never done this way anymore. Can you imagine Bathilde's thoughts at again finding Albrecht off in the middle of nowhere with some sketchy explanation? In Act I it was, "I thought it would be fun to dress as a peasant and go hunting, yeah, hunting, that's it." It didn't take long for Bathilde to discover what a crock that explanation was, and it sure makes a heck of a lot more sense than his second-act story: "Well, there was this woman. Um, lots of women, actually. And the woman, well, she was that one from the village, you know,  the crazy milkmaid chick I wanted to schtup? No, the milkmaid. But it's OK, because she was dead. Actually, they were all dead, so I couldn't have been cheating on you with any of them. Or if I did, it doesn't count. In fact, they were mean and tried to kill me. Thank God crazy dead chick still thought she loved me -- I have no idea why. Ouch! Anyway, I had to get busy with her, or I would've died. What a bummer that would've been, right before our marriage. I had no choice, really. Ouch!"

Anyway, I'm not going to go there; it's too complicated. Let's stick with the "standard" story the way it's usually performed these days. There are lots of ways the acts are alike, yet different:

At the beginning of each act, Hilarion, demonstrates how handy he is with his ... hands. In Act I, he hangs some dead birds off of Giselle's cottage. In Act II, he whips up the cross for Giselle's grave with nothing more than some sticks and a length of string. Making cross is a lot more practical than festooning her grave with dead flowers, like Albrecht does. For that matter, think of the fine mess Albrecht would be in if Hilarion hadn't cobbled together that cross. But does anyone thank Hilarion? Of course not. He's the ballet's designated loser.

In Act I, after Albrecht appears, Wilfred very wisely advises him to get the hell out of Dodge. Albrecht ignores him. In Act II, after Albrecht appears, Wilfred very wisely advises him -- well, you see where this is going, don't you?

In Act I, flowers help Albecht and Giselle get together. Same in Act II. In each act, Giselle starts dancing on her own, and then entices Albrecht to join her. They even dance to the same mazurka (I think it's a mazurka). Come to think of it, in each act, before she dances, she directs Albrecht to a spot safely outside of the action -- in Act I, it's the bench, and Act II, her cross --  and tells him "stay." Albrecht being Albrecht, he doesn't.

The greatest relation between the acts is a sort of dramatic chiasmus: Albrecht kills Giselle, Giselle saves Albrecht. It's not just a dramatic reversal, but one that's manifest in the choreography. Act I ends with Giselle dead at Albrecht's feet; Act II almost ends with Albrecht dead at Giselle's feet. Of course, where Albrecht brought about Giselle's death, Giselle's actions allow Albrecht to live; when Giselle falls, she doesn't get up; when Albrecht does, Giselle helps him to rise, because that's the kind of girl she is. Even dead, she's a better person than Albrecht. Go figure.

So, is Myrtha the Bizarro-world, or goateed, Bathilde? Certainly if a boulder fell on Bathilde's head right after Act I, her ghost would be fighting Myrtha for the chance to off Albrecht. (Oh, no, what if someone made a Giselle that was really about Bathilde? Like, if Giselle slips and stabs Bathilde with that stupid sword, so Bathilde's the ghost in Act II? That could be exquisite.) So Myrtha could be a refraction of Bathilde. But she could also be Berthe, who's not without some authority in Act I regarding her daughter.

It seems pretty clear to me that all these similarities between the acts are deliberate. There are too many of them to overlook. So, in a very real sense, each act of Giselle tells the same story, but with different endings. Why the semi-hidden parallels? What better way to highlight the differences between Albrecht, and Albrecht's world of the first act, and Giselle, and her world of the second act, than to show us so much that's the same, but different? Dare I say that they're two sides of the same coin? I guess I just did.

Also, once you notice Gautier's device (if it is indeed his), it's pretty cool. A lot of ballet is about coolness; things that impress you on a non-literal level. The dramatic devices that bind the acts are clever, but not the stuff of genius. What makes them so impressive is how well they've been implemented, and, bound into the warp and woof of the ballet, they're implemented pretty well. Well enough, I think, that you sense them even if you don't explicitly recognize them, and, well, it's creepy. Deliciously so. It can give you a chill down your spine, or should. It's not just Giselle that's transformed in the second act; it's the whole world. And if it could happen to the world, it could happen to you (and one day it will). And what is ballet about if not the transfiguration of our world?

On that cheery note I'm hitting the sack.