Contemporary Giselle - Themes

Putting the 4 main themes of the Contemporary Giselle into context;


The four main themes of the Contemporary Giselle are Control,, love, mental health and treatment of woment.

1. Control -   This theme is shown  by the social link between men and women in 1982.   This is shown in the movement by the villagers; the men are swinging the women around on their stick. The men are the ones holding the sticks over the women which shows they have more power.
2. Love - Love is showing in Giselle by her character being very flirty towards Lloys. They constantly hug and play with each other. At one point they pretend that they have a baby (using a cushion), they stroke each other, they each have their shy moments and then carry on flirting. She runs at him and both hold their arms wide open and hug.
3. Mental Health - Mental health has gone from been great and one of the best systems where the patients got treated to the best of the doctors ability to then get treated badly where no one really cared.
4. Treatment of women - Women got treated very different in the 1982 to what they do now a days which is why Mats Ek decided to use this in his choreography. You can see in the production of Giselle the treatment of women in the section when they women villagers come on set rolling eggs. This shows that the women's job is to be at home looking after their children and the house - cooking and cleaning. The men then come over the women as they are sat on their eggs and they doing an arching arm movement carrying their sticks over their right shoulder. This suggests that they are arching over the women and men are the most important.