In 1870, Paris could feel its claim to be the dance capital of Europe slipping away. Ticket sales were declining and war seemed inevitable. During this same year, on 25 May, Coppélia premiered at the Paris Opéra. Coppélia has come to symbolise the end of Romantic ballet; the end of an era in part defined by enchanted forests, ethereal creatures, and other supernatural elements presented on stage. Ballerinas were often not playing humans at all, but sylphs, ghosts, witches, and wilis – and enslaving mortal men with their magical powers.

Created in the wake of these Romantic traditions, Coppélia illustrated a distinct shift from these enchanted worlds. Its magic isn’t the kind that belongs in a glade or a graveyard, but in a cluttered workshop. The strange alchemy that Dr Coppelius wields to animate his living dolls is an example of new anxieties, slowly boiling up over decades previous, brought on by the rush of modernity. After all, Coppélia’s comedy has a strangely grim inspiration: the gothic horror story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann. In his story, Dr Coppelius is not a bumbling inventor; he’s a repulsive monster, terrifying children with his alchemical experiments. “… the most hideous form,” says the narrator, “could not have inspired me with deeper horror than this very Coppelius.”

Not all alchemy was so disquieting. One could walk from the Paris Opéra House to the Boulevard du Temple and visit the phantasmagorical theatre of illusionist Henri Robin. Here, ‘science shows’ would exhibit new technology alongside more familiar illusions of the supernatural. Similar magical spectacles could be found on the ballet stage, too. The supernatural stories made famous in Romantic ballets needed new technological ‘special effects’ to be effectively told. As the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once wrote: “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering problem”. Ballet proves him correct – not only in Dr Coppelius’ colourful pyrotechnics, but in something as seemingly simple as the kind of lighting used in the theatre.

Ballet was once performed while lit entirely by candles; now new kinds of lighting allowed for the stage to be illuminated while the audience was left in darkness. (In fact, some spectators complained about suddenly being forced to sit in the gloom as they watched.) The gas lighting used for La Sylphide at the Paris Opéra, premiering in 1832, allowed for the stage to be dimmed, and this let the designers create theatrical spaces of previously unknown depth and subtlety. It’s telling that many critics later found the illusions presented in the Paris Opéra’s Giselle – first performed in 1841 – so compelling they described it as if it were a real place on stage, rather than the sum of clever artifice.

Changing costumes, too, were far more than just decoration. Pointe shoes transformed from simple non-heeled shoes secured by ribbons to leather-soled shoes with darned toes, and the dancing done while wearing them shifted as well. An increasing use of pointe work required ballerinas have more support from their partners, as their balance could be more precarious; this created the sense of more choreographic intimacy. ‘Flying machines’ had allowed ballerinas suspended from wires, the illusion of flight throughout the 19th Century, but pointe shoes allowed dancers to seem to hover weightlessly above the stage under their own power. When wires were employed to lift Carlotta Grisi, the original Giselle, pointe work also allowed her to ‘take off’ more convincingly.

Like these illusions of flight, other magic tricks familiar to ballet audiences became associated with supernatural powers. The long white dresses used in La Sylphide became almost a kind of uniform of the supernatural, thanks to the way they glowed in the gas lighting and kept moving, mysteriously, once the dancer was still. Even trapdoors were associated with the supernatural. While in La Sylphide, a trapdoor allowed a ballerina to disappear into a chimney, they were often used to suck evil characters down to face whatever eternal punishment was awaiting them below. This was common enough that the area below the stage became known by its theological label: ‘hell’.

In the outer suburbs of Paris, years before this premiere, magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin built his own automaton. It was capable only of signing a perfect facsimile of its creator’s name when asked the following question: “Who gave you life?” Coppélia answers that question with the names of its composers, choreographers, designers, dancers, and other magicians – both onstage and off.

This is an edited excerpt from Martyn Pedler’s article for The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia souvenir programme

Coppélia plays in Melbourne from 10 – 22 June

Top: Ray Powell – Photography Darryl Smythe
Above: Leanne Stojmenov and Damien Welch – Photography – Branco Gaica

Coppélia’s Franz and Swanilda are roles traditionally given to ballet stars on the rise.  Lana Jones and Daniel Gaudiello are not playing the trouble-making pair together on stage but, as newlyweds, they’ll be sharing notes after hours. Franz is Daniel’s first full-length performance in a classic three-act ballet. And, for Lana, Swanilda is a role most ballerinas only dream of dancing. Jessica Thomson caught up with Lana and Daniel while they were preparing for two of  ballet’s most iconic roles.

Q&A with Daniel Gaudiello
Do you feel this is something of a breakthrough role for you – your first full-length lead in one of the classics?
That’s right, it will be. It’ll be a great challenge. And I don’t know if it’ll be too much for me but I should be fine because it’s not as huge as some of the other ballets, I hope! You know, there are some ballets where you’re ‘on’ all the time, but I think this ballet might be a good step – a platform to get to the big stuff.

What are you looking forward to most about playing Franz?
Everything about it: putting myself into a three-act ballet for starters, and carrying the show. I’m looking forward to getting into the character and taking the audience on Franz’ journey. I’m going to enjoy the dancing, because it feels really nice on the body. And I’m going to enjoy the character in the second act; I go to town on the character. I really look forward to the acting. I guess that’s why I dance – to be a new character every day is fun.

Even though you’re not dancing with Lana, what’s it like to share the experience of both being cast in these roles for the first time (well, in a professional sense anyway!)?
It’s great to be in the same boat and, yeah, we can share experiences. It’s nice to dance together, but when we dance apart it’s almost easier because you’re leaving work at work, and when you come home it’s not like, ‘My partner was crap … Oh! You’re my partner!’

So we’re in a really good place. And we’re just happy to be doing these roles because they’re our dreams; what we wished we were doing all our lives, and now we’re at that point it’s exciting.

I think I’m going to have to try and keep it feeling easy. If I can go out there, do my best and have a bit of fun with the people on stage and make sure the audience is laughing and having fun, well, then I’ve done my job.

Q&A with Lana Jones
Are you excited about performing this role?
It’s definitely a role you want to do.  You want to be able to say, ‘I’ve done Swanilda in Coppélia’, definitely.

What are you looking forward to most about playing Swanilda?
I think the vivacity of it, and I think she’s going to be a fun character. There’s lots of dancing in it too, which is really nice and always fun and challenging.

Yes, it would be quite a test of stamina I’d imagine.
Yeah, I know! It looks like it’s just all fun and games …

Which former Swanildas have you admired in the role? Has there been a particular interpretation that you’ve really loved?
Well, at the beginning of the year we saw the full company perform Coppélia on DVD, and we watched Lisa Pavane do it and she was absolutely beautiful; definitely a good person to look up to.

Even though you’re not dancing with Daniel, what’s it been like to share the experience of being cast in these roles for the first time?
It’s really exciting for Daniel because it’s a full-length, and even though he’s doing The Silver Rose, which is also a full-length work, it’s his first classic three-act, full-length ballet. It’s really exciting to share that with him. It was so exciting to see him cast with Madeleine Eastoe because she’s a beautiful dancer, and it’s a great privilege for Daniel to be with someone like that, of her calibre. I’m dancing Coppélia with Kevin Jackson, which I’m really looking forward to.

What will you do to prepare for the role?
Go to toyshops!

Coppélia plays in Sydney from 4 – 22 May and Melbourne from 10 – 22 June

Images: Artists of The Australian Ballet in Coppélia. Photography by Gaica Branco.

But it had another side-effect, too: popularising the use of dancers as mechanical dolls on the ballet stage. The Nutcracker famously brought three toys to life in 1892: a spring-activated trio consisting of Harlequin, Columbine, and a Toy Soldier. In 1919, The Magic Toy Store – or, more snappily, Boutique Fantasque – featured a love story between a ballerina doll and a toy soldier who refuse to be sold to separate customers.

Perhaps the most interesting response to Coppélia’s success came in 1911, when a Russian puppet made from straw and sawdust was brought to life by the Ballets Russes. Petrouchka is a colourful and lively ballet but a tragic one, too. Its living puppet is enslaved by a wizard, unloved by a puppet ballerina, and finally meets his doom at sword-point.

The creators of Petrouchka were certainly aware of Coppélia – in fact, the set designer Alexandre Benois said that his entire artistic development was “immensely influenced” by the earlier work. And if Coppélia turned E. T. A. Hoffmann’s grim original tale into a joyful comedy, then Petrouchka took hold of the same material and dragged its puppets back toward darkness again.

Why is it so appealing to turn dancers into living puppets, toys, or other automatons? One Shakespeare critic, Phyllis Rackin, suggests it might be the same reason that the Bard’s so-called ‘crossdressing comedies’ are so tempting for actors: it clearly demonstrates the incredible skill of the performers who are suddenly transformed.

The Australian Ballet performs Coppélia in Sydney and Melbourne

Marc Cassidy in Petrouchka. Photography Tim Richardson

Dame Peggy van Praagh enlisted film and theatre director George Ogilvie to freshen up her production of Coppélia after realising what her weary dolls needed: the deft theatrical touch of a dramaturge. The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia is now in the company of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Russell Crowe’s first major film The Crossing and countless theatre classics on George Ogilvie’s CV. Helen Elliott chatted to George about how he brought Coppélia to life.

One day in 1979 Peggy van Praagh came to George Ogilvie and asked for his help. She was thinking of remaking the sunniest of 19^th century narrative ballets, Coppélia. George was a theatre director and he had never directed a ballet. “I remember,” George says, “being surprised and a little confused. I wondered what she wanted from me.”

She wanted that elusive thing that all directors crave – the old made thrillingly new.

30 years later, to coincide with the centenary of Dame Peggy’s birth, The Australian Ballet performs the Coppélia that she, George Ogilvie and designer Kristian Fredrikson first presented to delighted audiences in 1979. Once again, in 2010, George was involved in the rehearsal process of this charming ballet.

During the ‘60s and ‘70s George and Kristian worked together on countless theatre and musical productions. Dame Peggy was an early mentor of Kristian’s and through her he developed a particular love of ballet, and a thorough understanding of the rigours of ballet design. But although George had worked with dancers, and was familiar with ballet, his great passion and expertise was, and still is, drama. Coppélia was to be his initiation into an entire ballet production. “I later discovered that using a dramaturge was quite common in Europe, but it had not been done here at all,” George says. “So this was a first time for the company and for me.”

The story of the lonely Dr Coppelius and his obsession with his life-like doll, Coppélia has a long history as an audience favourite. And Leo Delibes’ tender score – which offers some of the most danceable ballet music ever written – is a favourite with performers. “It was,” says George Ogilvie, “an old-fashioned story ballet. So how to approach it as something new?

George remembers how the three of them would sit down at a table and talk, Fredrikson would draw, and they would look at the story again and re-think. Delibes’ score was played day and night in the Melbourne house that George and Kristian shared with another friend.  It was, finally, the music that pulled the ballet together. “I found that the music was my master, totally, and it was the same for the others. Everything was controlled by the music. We just listened and listened to the music until it was embedded in our bones.”

Kristian Fredrikson’s design also played a central role in inspiring George and Dame Peggy. He lovingly made detailed models of every act, including the dolls. Dame Peggy was “ecstatic”, George says. He believes Kristian was the genius behind the entire thing. “His ideas were so tight for this gothic farytale.”

It was Dame Peggy van Praagh’s dedication and practical energy that invigorated the ballet, too. “Peggy’s life was ballet,” George says. “She had a sort of private life but ballet was everything. Coppélia was her opportunity to do something for the ballet that was lasting and she did. It was an amazing success. Her greatest success.”

This is an edited excerpt from Helen Elliott’s article for The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia souvenir programme

Image: Yosvani Ramos and Leanne Stojmenov. Photography Justin Smith

The stuffy hot air outside the Arts Centre one January morning is thick with the smell of approaching rain, and Melbourne is a swamp of sweaty businessmen and clammy café workers.  But inside The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre, a cool and collected Michael Williams, head of the Wardrobe Department, takes me through the hundreds of Coppélia costumes being picked, tucked and stitched. There is barely a moment to waste as the department works frantically on preparing not only Coppélia, but also the equally mammoth The Silver Rose.  It quickly becomes apparent that Gene Kelly and Princess Buttercup are here to keep the smiles coming and frowns at bay.

Fredrikson’s Coppélia costumes were created over 30 years ago in a canvas goods factory off Racecourse Road. Today they are undergoing an extensive restoration process. Layers of silk, lace, tulle and taffeta are flopped over chairs and big worktables. It’s a scene with all the flurry and adornment of a Parisian atelier. Many of the costumes are being remade or restored. Rotting silk on jackets must be replaced then dyed to match the older, harder-wearing silks. Saggy tutu skirts need a lift, and Swanhilda receives a new Act 3 Wedding tutu that looks like it’s been plucked straight from a Christian Lacroix runway show. The ‘Reaper Boys’ trousers require a total remake. With the original fabric no longer stocked, wardrobe has found a remarkable look-alike solution: cotton waffle-weave blankets. There is no waste as each unused costume is pillaged for its healthy trimmings, which are then used on new costumes. The wardrobe department looks like a beautiful and fantastical hospital. Costumes on the brink of death are brought back to life with a lot of  care and a lot of thread.

It’s not just decaying and torn fabrics that need a touch up. The variation in size between company members compared to the dancers of the late 70s has warranted, in some cases, total remakes. This is time-consuming work, especially when replicating Fredrikson’s designs. The simplest-looking of his garments can have up to four layers, each with its own detail and specificity. Sitting in a room next to Michael’s office is a model set of Act 3 Coppélia, which Fredrikson created and painted. It is extremely intricate – painted with a two-hair squirrel artist’s brush. It is a testament to Fredrikson’s eye for detail. For Coppélia, Fredrikson turned to close friend and milliner Marjorie Head to create a number of the headdresses. Williams shows me two of particular beauty. The ‘School Mistress’ hat, covered in dozens of handmade orange and brown pom-poms, and the ‘Dawn’ headdress, a tiara adorned in fine wiring and feathers that, from afar, resembles a tropical sunrise and perfectly mirrors the delicate backdrop.

Lynn Munro, in charge of the restoration of the Coppélia costumes, is busy in the dyeing room. Amongst the big cauldrons of dye are piles of unfinished ‘Hours’ tutus. Fabrics of voluptuous aquamarine and husky midnight blues are strewn over the table as she fingers through the ‘recipe’ book for each dye formula. For the wardrobe staff, the legacy of this ballet elicits tender care and respect for every fold of fabric.  Within the pages of the Coppélia design book, Fredrikson’s delicate drawings are in shades of ripe apricot and mellow olive green – a palette of autumnal and tawny hues. The most impressive thing about Fredrikson’s distinctive drawings is the way each is traced with theatricality. Not only are the costumes rendered with enchanting detail, each character is drawn with personality and movement.  Michael Williams tells me that this was typical of the astute Fredrikson. His vision of the complete character was always very clear in his mind.

As Williams walks me through the many racks of costumes, my eye is drawn to Dr. Coppelius’s cloak, which he dons when practising the occult in Act 2. The cloak is covered in painted eyes that seem to follow you, each one bleeding deep crimson, trickling blood down the folds of the cape. It is fitting, as Coppélia was originally titled The Girl With the Enamel Eyes. Close by are the equally harrowing ‘dolls’. Aside from the mandatory Spanish, Chinese and Scottish dolls, Fredrikson designed dolls he might have desired as a young boy; a headless monster, an unfinished ragdoll, a disembodied clown which assists Dr. Coppelius in creating his deadly concoctions. Act 2, the dark chocolate centre of the ballet, raises moral and spiritual issues that are often overlooked amidst the mayhem and mischief of Act 1 and the Harvest and Wedding dances of Act 3.

Kristian Fredrikson, Michael tells me smiling, was ‘The Sara-Lee designer’, a reference to the iconic Australian layered ice cream cake. Peel back the top and one finds layer upon layer of unassuming brilliance.

Coppélia plays in Sydney from 4 – 22 May and Melbourne from 10 – 22 June
Sydney tickets are now on sale; Melbourne tickets on sale from 11 March

Swanilda, the leading lady in the fairytale favourite Coppélia, is traditionally a breakthrough role for a dancer on the rise. She’s fierce, funny, and does ‘the robot’ pretty convincingly. When Swanilda’s fiancé Franz falls in love with a mysterious dancing doll, she doesn’t let him off lightly. Behind closed doors, Swanilda stealthily changes places with the doll and, with stiff, jerky movements, fools everyone. Coppélia was Dame Peggy van Praagh’s all-time favourite ballet and in The Australian Ballet’s 1990 souvenir programme, she explained where her love of performing Swanilda began.

“Ever since the early forties, Coppélia seems to have been a part of my life. I did not expect to dance Swanilda when I first joined the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet in 1941. I was not even the understudy for this role. In June 1942, London was subjected to severe air raids. One of the company’s ballerinas, Mary Honer, was at the Café de Paris when it received a direct hit. She was lucky to escape serious injury but suffered severe shock and was unable to dance for several weeks.

“Dame Ninette de Valois, the company’s artistic director, telephoned to inform me that I was to dance Swanilda in Oxford in four days’ time and that I should come immediately to rehearse the role. Robert Helpmann, who was to partner me as Franz, could attend but one rehearsal of the pas de deux. The rest of the company was on tour and I was unable to rehearse with them. So on an evening in June 1942 it was a very nervous Swanilda that took the stage. Later I grew to enjoy the role which I danced many times before I left the company in 1946 to become Ballet Mistress of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.”

The Australian Ballet will perform Coppélia in Melbourne and Sydney. Subscription packages are still available in both cities

Image: Peggy van Praagh as Swanilda in Coppelia