Oklahoma City Ballet Prepares For Giselle Production

The Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages Porch took a trip to the Oklahoma City Ballet to learn about their upcoming performance of Giselle.

Artistic Director Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye talked during their morning warm up.

“We're going to perform a full length ballet, a very old full length ballet,” Jolicoeur-Nye said. “It's called Giselle, and it's a quintessential representation of romantic classicism.”

The dancers have been working hard to prepare for the shows.

“It is hours of work. We have about six hours a day of rehearsal, and we're rehearsing for five days out of the week, a total of four to five weeks before we can put something like this on stage,” Jolicoeur-Nye said.

The Giselle ballet has been around for almost 200 years.

“For people like myself, [when] we're staging work like this, it brings back a lot of memories from my own teachers who passed on information from their teachers,” Jolicoeur-Nye said. “So really, it's a generational handing down of information, important information that keeps ballet alive.”

Jolicoeur-Nye encourages engagement from the audience during performances.

“We are very laid back,” Jolicoeur-Nye said. “I enjoy it when the audience sees something that they like that they applaud or yell Bravo for the artists. They're working so hard. This performance in particular is very hard on the pointe shoe wearing dancers, the willies in the second act. Really, they put them to work.”

For more information about the Oklahoma CIty ballet, you can visit their website and purchase tickets for the upcoming show, Giselle.