La Fille Mal Gardee Review

La Fille Mal Gardee: The Wayward Girl

This ballet was first performed 1^st July 1789 and is one of the oldest most important ballet to the modern ballet in repertory.

The opening scene of the performance with these life size chickens is very and sets the tone for the whole piece. Although at first I wasn’t sure if I liked the chickens they grew on me as I watched the rest of the performance. Which is wonderfully comical; the boy which the wayward girl is meant to marry shows his character so clearly through the way he dances, in a clumsy and immature way. Having her mother played by a man gives a pantomime feeling to the performance but that does not take away from the enjoyment of the piece.

I liked the way they used a lot of traditional character dancing the may pole dancing, clog dancing, and Morris dancing this reflected the age of the piece for before ballet was formed as we see it now it combined a lot of this traditional dancing with the ballet. I liked the use of props when dancing particularly when the wayward girl dances with the man she loves with the ribbon. It is as youthful and playful as young love should be. The characters within this performance are very strong which is why I enjoyed it so much you were drawn into their lives.

The costumes show the summertime so clearly with bright pinks, yellows, and blues with prints of gingham and stripes. The costumes work well together combining so that it creates a perfect picture of workers out in the field collecting the harvest.