The Sylph and The Wilis: Romantic Ballet as Mythic Drama

Jean-Georges Noverre, in his Lettres sur la danse et les ballets, calls for a radical shift of ballet’s presentation towards that of a series of pictures that dramatically unfold a plot. Though this allows for a productive step in the progression of the art form, especially considering the time, Noverre overemphasizes the particularity of the scenic element of ballet. Despite his concern with the particular expression of character, these figures live on in the universal mythic tale, beyond each dramatic presentation. Over a century later, Stéphane Mallarmé warns against ballet becoming too scenic, and suggests that it rather strive to be symbolic. The ballerina, for Mallarmé, is ‘not a girl, but rather a metaphor.’ By asserting that dancing is a way of suggesting what the written word might express, Mallarmé overemphasizes the universality of poetic form, while neglecting that the metaphor is embodied in the particular. I argue that ballet can be captured in neither paint nor poem; it is a dramatic presentation of its own mythic medium. Its stature is only accurately articulated by F.W.J. Schelling’s definition of symbolism: that of an absolute unity between the particular and the universal. The Romantic ballets La Sylphide and Giselle exemplify this ephemeral quality in the purest possible way.