Fun and mischief in Balanchine’s ‘Coppélia’: an Atlanta Ballet premiere

George Balanchine’s Coppélia is a big ballet and not just because it’s a full-length story ballet in three acts. It has an unusually large cast, huge sets and a big birthday: The ballet is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It premiered at New York City Ballet’s summer home in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1974, and was a huge success.

Now it’s coming to Atlanta for the first time, thanks to Atlanta Ballet Artistic Director Gennadi Nedvigin. It is the largest production the company has ever performed, he said recently, and will have its Atlanta premiere March 21 through March 23 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.

Atlanta Ballet audiences have seen Coppélia before, but not for many years. In 1998, the company performed an American Ballet Theatre production, and in 1992 it presented choreographer Dennis Nahat’s version. Neither was as large or as lavish as this one.

Thirty-seven company dancers, 19 Atlanta Ballet 2 dancers and 35 academy students from the Atlanta Ballet’s Centre for Dance Education will perform, one of the largest casts of children of any classical ballet, Nedvigin says. “The choreography for them is complicated and a big challenge for them. They are on stage for half an hour, performing different formations and variations. They are basically the corps de ballet for the third act.”

Coppélia tells the story of an eccentric toy maker, Dr. Coppélius, who creates a lifelike mechanical doll and dreams of bringing her to life. Frantz, a young man in the village, sees her sitting in the toy maker’s window, believes her to be real and falls in love with her. His fiancée, Swanhilda, gets jealous of her “rival” but, after discovering that Coppélia is only a doll, plays a trick on the toymaker and forgives Frantz. Cue a lavish, dance-filled wedding celebration. (Emily Carrico will perform Swanhilda on Saturday afternoon — that’s worth noting because she and her husband, dancer-choreographer Sergio Masero, are leaving the company at the end of the season and moving to Spain.)

There aren’t many comedies in the narrative ballet world — old stalwarts like Giselle and Swan Lake revolve around doomed love affairs. Tragedy is central to many contemporary story ballets, too, among them Michael Pink’s Dracula, Stephen Mills’ Hamlet and even Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Coco Chanel, all of which are in Atlanta Ballet’s repertoire.

Coppélia, however, is all fun and mischief. It was created by dancing master Arthur Saint-Léon and premiered in 1870 in Paris. In 1884, it was restaged by Marius Petipa and in 1894 revised by another ballet master, Enrico Cecchetti. Since then, it has become one of the world’s most popular ballets. Nedvigin describes it as simple and down to earth. “It is about young people getting into trouble and has a certain easygoing freedom to it.”

To create his version, Balanchine worked closely with former ballerina Alexandra Danilova, who performed the role of Swanhilda with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1940s. She drew from her memories to create Acts I and II, while Act III is all Balanchine and consists of dazzling variations, including lots of big jumps for the men.

Balanchine created the role of Frantz for Helgi Tómasson, who later became artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet and brought Balanchine’s Coppélia into repertory there in 2011 when Nedvigin was still dancing with the company. Nedvigin was cast as San Francisco Ballet’s first Frantz, and the production was a huge success.

Nedvigin said he excelled in the big leaps that the Act III variations call for. “I still had all the power and technique at that point in my career and felt comfortable on stage,” he said. “I loved it.”

The news website SF Gate loved it, too: “For Nedvigin, Franz (sic) is simply a career triumph, notable for purity of style, antic spirit and elegant showmanship.”

Memories aside, Nedvigin and his production crew had to find ways to accommodate the large sets which Atlanta Ballet is renting from Pacific Northwest Ballet. Part of the solution was to use the special, heavy-duty floor that was created for the Nutcracker to strengthen the floor of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre stage. This custom-made floor can withstand the pressure of heavy set pieces as they are moved on and off the stage, Nedvigin explains.

Coppélia’s grand sets and historical heft, however, cannot overshadow the detail that is required by the dancers as they prepare. “Comedic ballets require people to loosen up and be a little bit of a fool,” Nedvigin says. And the dancers need to act, not just dance.

This requires careful attention. During rehearsal, dancers constantly check themselves in the mirror — a habit from their rigorous in-studio training — instead of focusing fully on the dancer they are acting with in a scene. This can interfere with the narrative flow and look awkward and unrealistic.

The stagers and rehearsal directors taught the dancers how to relate to each other in realistic ways, to focus on correct timing and to not be tempted to watch themselves in the mirror. In fact, as the company gets closer to the performance, they rehearse in a different direction in the studio — with the mirrors on either side of them instead of in front of and behind them. But even then, Nedvigin says with a laugh, “they are still tempted to sneak a sideways look in the mirror.”

Atlanta Ballet has performed more than 10 Balanchine works, among them Serenade, Allegro Brillante, Prodigal Son, Divertimento #15, Tarantella, and Who Cares. Nedvigin hinted that Coppélia won’t be the last. But there’s no doubt it will be the biggest and the only one that makes audiences laugh out loud.

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Gillian Anne Renault is ArtsATL’s senior editor for dance and art+design and has been an ArtsATL contributor since 2012. She has covered dance for the Los Angeles Daily News, Herald Examiner and Ballet News and on radio stations such as KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, California. Many years ago, she was awarded an NEA Fellowship to attend American Dance Festival’s Dance Criticism program.