Ballet Cymru at Theatr Clwyd - "Llongyfarchiadau"

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Ballet Cymru Giselle Theatr Clwyd, Mold, 8 July 2025  20:00

I have been following Ballet Cymru for well over 12 years, and have seen some great shows including Romeo a Juliet at the Riverfront on 5 Nov 2016 and Child's Christmas in Wales and Tiger Eggs at the Pontio Centre in Bangor on 1 Dec 2018. Last night's performance of Giselle by Ballet Cymru at Theatr Clwyd in Mold was exceptional.  I think it was the best performance by Ballet Cymru of anything that I have ever seen them do.  It was also one of the best performances of Giselle by any company that I can recall in 65 years of ballet going.  Over that time, I have seen some of the world's best artists in that ballet.

I described Darius James and Amy Doughty's new production in Ballet Cymru's Giselle 3.0  and The Days I went to Bangor - Ballet Cymru's Relaxed Performances.  James and Doughty have stripped Giselle to its essentials, emphasising its drama in much the same way as David Dawson did with Scottish Ballet's Swan Lake (see Empire Blanc: Dawson's Swan Lake, 4 June 2016).  That places a lot of responsibility on the virtuosity and storytelling capabilities of the artists who dance the three principal characters, Giselle, Albrecht and Myrtha.  Happily, Gwenllian Davies, Kamal Singh and Jakob Myers were more than equal to the challenge, and they were supported brilliantly by the rest of the cast.  The result was an exciting but also very polished performance.

Yesterday, the title role was danced by Gwenllian Davies.   I first saw her in Romeo a Juliet in 2016 and wrote:

"One of the reasons why I loved the show so much was Gwenllian Davies's remarkable performance as Juliet. Davies is in her first year with the company and this is her first job. Consequently, she is barely older than Shakespeare's Juliet. As I told her after the show, I have seen some of the world's greatest dancers in the role including Lynn Seymour and more recently Alina Cojocaru and Viktoria Tereshkina, but never have I seen a more convincing Juliet. Davies danced with passion and energy and, for a while, I Slovak saw in that talented young artist what Shakespeare must have imagined."

Since then, Davies has danced with the Opera Baltic Ballet in Gdansk, where she performed Giselle as well as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Clara and the offering in The Rite of Spring.   Her performance as Giselle impressed me even more than her performance as Juliet.   

It comes as no surprise to learn that Singh attended the Vaganova's Russian masters' programme in 2019 because he dances like a Russian.   He showed enormous strength and achieved great elevation - virtuosity tempered with consummate grace.  One of the tests of a male dancer is the degree to which he enables his partner to shine.  In that respect, Singh was a perfect partner for Davies.  Singh is also an accomplished dance actor, projecting all the emotions from arrogance to repentance.

The queen of the wilis is one of the great female roles.  Until yesterday, I would have regarded the idea of a male Myrtha as absurd.  Yet Jakob Myers somehow made it work.  Not only that, he injected another level of horror into that role.  In a romantic tutu, he appeared as something unnatural - indeed diabolical.  Myers is also a virtuoso, and I had been impressed with his performance as Albrecht in Bangor.  Yesterday he gave me the creeps, which I believe to have been his and the choreographers' intention.

Everyone in the cast danced well, particularly Isobel Holland in the peasant pas de deux and Sanea Singh as one of Giselle's friends in Act 1.  Holland is also an artist I have followed for a long time and I am now a fan of Sabea Singh.

The ballet was danced to Adolphe Adam's score recorded by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Mogrelia.  The sets and costumes were designed by Darius James, and the lighting by Chris Illingworth.  

The evening began with a performance of a dance routine by schoolchildren from Ysgol Tŷ Ffynnon in Shotton called Finding Peace. Accompanying programme notes stated that the dancers would explore the vast emotions that Giselle experienced from love and happiness to anger and devastation. They would take the audience on a journey of trust, heartbreak and betrayal to eventual peace. Their performance was offered under the Duets scheme, which I mentioned in my review of Ballet Cymru's performance in Bangor. As I said in that article, it is a project that deserves the widest possible support.

This was the first time that I had visited Theatr Clwyd since its extensive renovation.  It is a very impressive undertaking.   It is not completely finished.  For example, a new restaurant to be run by Bryn Williams is expected to open later in the year.  As it was not available yesterday, a friend and I visited a very good gastro pub just a few hundred yards from the theatre called Glasfryn.   Although the traditional industries of Northeast Wales were mining, steel making and heavy industry, there is also some spectacularly beautiful countryside with a lot of historic buildings and archaeological sites to visit.  Yesterday we visited Chirk Castle, which is just over 20 miles from Mold.  Other places in the neighbourhood that are worth visiting are Flint Castle, Erddig Hall and the city of Chester.