Akram Khan’s Giselle for English National Ballet / Will Tuckett choreographs Death of Gesualdo for The Gesualdo Six

London Coliseum / St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London January 2026

Last week, I invited a trained dancer to Akram Khan’s reimagining of Giselle, which packed the London Coliseum for six performances. Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the production decisively rejects the rustics and ethereal spirits of the original ballet in favor of a contemporary comment on class struggles and workers’ exploitation.

Khan offers Giselle as one of the drab women in the ensemble, neither shy nor flirtatious but apparently pursued by two nearly indistinguishable men. The action fills a placeless space, and barring several stately courtiers, everyone wears neutral colors.

Adam’s evocative music emerges fitfully from a new score by Vincenzo Lamagna that resounds with the clanking roar of a steel foundry. The Romantic conflict between the real and ideal worlds has largely vanished too, taking with it the dual nature of a title role that traditionally poses significant interpretive challenges.

Watching this ill-defined revision of a crucially emotional narrative, I remembered being photographed from the back at an exhibition press view. When the photo appeared in print, you could tell the figure was me if you already knew it was me. In this case, you would have recognized Giselle only if you were already familiar with Giselle.

If not, you saw stylized folk dancing and anonymous crowds—first scurrying, then ferocious, with staves in their hands. Did the courtiers kill Giselle when they surrounded her? Who could tell? She was certainly dead when they stepped away from her body.

The next day my guest emailed me. Matching my own response, she praised the dancers, Mark Henderson’s lighting design, and the orchestra.

But, she continued, “I did not feel the connection I often have when I go to performances. It left me wondering why, who did what. Perhaps that’s what the choreographer wanted?….What [did] they want to tell me? Was it a political message? A social one? I guess when an audience starts having these thoughts, it misses the point of the ‘ballet,’ that is, it is not in the moment, at ‘one’ with the show.”

What the choreographer wanted in the striking “theatrical concert” Death of Gesualdo was never in doubt. Co-commissioned by St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the National Centre for Early Music, and Music Before 1800, the riveting production involved The Gesualdo Six, an a cappella vocal ensemble, and six silent actor-dancers, seamlessly sharing a platform in St. Martin’s nave.

As directed by Bill Barclay and choreographed by Will Tuckett, key moments of Gesualdo’s life materialized like a string of vivid paintings, conjured in a glowing sequence of tableaux vivants set against the complex harmonies of the composer’s madrigals and sacred works.

Gesualdo’s reputation now embraces far more than his music. He was a degenerate aristocrat, a cuckold, a vicious murderer, and finally a reclusive religious penitent. Some choreographers might try to realize all his dazzling creativity and personal misery in continuous movement. Choosing selectively, Tuckett and Barclay capture the artist and his time in provocative snapshots.

As if by magic, a child rose from a recumbent dead body; through the bunraku-style puppet, we met Gesualdo simultaneously at the beginning and end of his life. His marriage and its consummation formed and dissolved as efficiently as dreams, with the veil for one transformed into the walls that house the other. And the horrifying murder of his wife and lover in flagrante occurred, wisely, in a blackout, enacted only by a piercing scream.

If you’d never heard of the composer or his tortured life, you’d easily follow this man’s shocking descent from first love to blood, vengeance, guilt and despair. The tableaux and brief passages of dance guide you through his torment like the brilliant illuminations of an ancient manuscript, torn from the text but independently expressive of its content.

Though dancemakers often ignore the power of stillness, it’s a communicative tool that Tuckett wields with authority. His judicious choreographic restraint puts memorable flesh on Gesualdo’s music and flamboyant history.

English National Ballet at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, then touring, March 19 to May 2. ballet.org.uk

Death of Gesualdo at St. John the Divine, New York on February 13, further tour dates to be announced. thegesualdosix.co.uk