Certain diamonds shine blue when excited with invisible ultraviolet radiations, even if their colour is almond brown, like Tamara's eyes.

On September 9th, 2006, I travelled to the Barcelona's Opera House, Gran Teatre del Liceu, to attend a performance of Giselle by the English National Ballet, with Tamara Rojo and José Manuel Carreño, guest stars from the Royal Ballet and American Ballet respectively, as principals. I hadn't seen Tamara again since the Oviedo Gala, "A night with Tamara Rojo” .

I arrived with time enough to talk to her while she prepared before the performance, in the very Liceu stage. Wearing a blue rehearsal overall, we commented the situation of our friends in Spain . I asked her if she would like to return to her country, difficult as it is, and she told me that she had no need to fight against the same people; but her look told me something else. Tamara expresses with her eyes what can not be said by any other means. She is thin and her voice does not reflect the determination and strength that emanates from her interior, an electric sparkle in that blue shine of her eyes.

“ The same people ” is not Tamara's objective, but later facts to that performance demonstrate her interest to dance in her land and, who knows! Maybe also to promote the next generation of promises that, as her, need much more than what they get offered in Spain .

The great production of this Giselle and its coming-out in Barcelona 's theatre, show this so significant shortage of Spanish scene. The renewed Liceu is able to house the English National Ballet of Wayne Eagling and to bring two stars of that level in the key masterpiece of the romantic repertoire, with an exquisite treatment of the presentation. All is in line with the entity and with the quality of the proposal, excepting the evident lack of will for the creation of an own company that could compete with the ones from similar theatres with lower tradition and lower budgets.

Tamara's presence in this performance had, so, a special significance further from the artistic aspect. However, when the curtain rose and first accords sounded, I forgot all that, gooseflesh invaded me with the thought of the splendour that was going to come. ENB version is a model, traditional in the best historical sense, recovering some of the original variations that were substituted as time passed by, like Giselle 's one in the “pas de deux” of the first act.

“Great classics are ours to keep because they contain elevated ethic principles, moral lessons without being tied to a specific moment or place”. These are words Tamara said to me few time ago and they demonstrate her deep knowledge about what she does. Giselle is the paradigm that goes beyond romantics to be a revelation, valid in the XIX as well as in the XXI centuries.

In Giselle, love is not only the product of an extraordinary fable but the development of the human capacity to emanate the best perfume, combining heart essence with the wise that comes from failure and dead.

The role representation is real and so it requires a complex approximation that Tamara makes hers with natural behaviour and precision. Her Giselle is not foolish, but innocent; her happiness is not ingenuous but full of live; her attitude is devote, intelligent, honest. Apart from the impeccable technique in the steps and in her line, that she has always had, her creation is full of nuances, as the ones we are pointing out, and leaves aside the usual and affected clichés we find in other versions. Her pantomime is “Theatre of the True”, as Buero 1 would say, this is why her Giselle is not antique and it affects us as a universal drama.

The expertise of José Manuel Carreño, lyric and subtle, provided a perfect partner to the service of a choreography he knows like the back of his hand. The rest of the cast was able to maintain the high standard, well adjusted in their variations as a whole. With a measure in the distribution of the space totally “British” and a dialogue of elements very defined, very clear in the Court presentation and in its posterior sequence, previous to Giselle's madness.

At that moment of the tragic end, when the Duke swindle is discovered by Hilarion's revenge, the audience hold their breath up to the moment when the curtain left laid, in the first act final shot, a Tamara-Giselle touched and touching, of a tremendous projection in the dead scene.

“In a look I can discover the sea; in eyes, I can drown”. In the second act of this performance, I discovered all Giselle's pain in Tamara's eyes as I had never seen. The happy girl is now a woman that knows human soul and suffers without giving up loving. Death as a maturity symbol. In fact, as a door lintel that one has to cross a lot of times during life, approaching us to what we are. After many years tacking pictures to so many artists, I'm pretty sure that it is not possible to show that pain without having experienced it.

From all the mime during that performance, what engraved more was the sensation that it communicated something real, significant. Maybe it was the moral lesson Tamara was talking about, when Giselle keeps alive an exhausted Albrecht and disappears at dawn, as a memory.

Since its premiere in 1841, in Paris , till now, this masterpiece has experienced a large number of versions and has had many historical readings. Carlotta Grisi put the first link of a long chain where Fanny Elssler, Anna Pavlova, the Markova or Alicia Alonso shone.

Not in vain this is a piece in which the weight of the work falls on the involvement of the leading ballerina, as a clear exponent of her quality as a dancer.

This performance, with a big company where relevant names such as Thomas Edur, Agnes Oaks, Daria Klimentova, Erina Takahashi, Dmitri Grudyev and Yat-Sen Chang , among others, are engaged, highlights the importance of the setting in a ballerina as Tamara, a diamond exquisitely cut by very skilled hands.

Tamara convinced and shone as only a true diamond can do, with that extraordinary and mysterious bluish light of an astonishing Giselle .

I do not want to finish without clarifying that what is said here is only the personal view of a dance lover photograph, an unpretentious former dancer who is sorry to not to be able to better express the captivating beauty of all he witnessed, together with the unavoidable thoughts that it produced on me.

I had been very lucky to be there and I wanted to share it with all of you, nothing else.

1 Antonio BUERO VALLEJO Spanish writer ( Guadalajara, 1916 - Madrid, 2000)

Para fotoescena, © 2007 Jesús Vallinas

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