“@giselle”: A technology-driven, contemporary reinvention of the beloved romantic ballet classic

@giselle updates the narrative to the present, telling the story of a young woman named Giselle who is betrayed, isolated, and ghosted by her romantic partner on social media. In a state of extreme anxiety, Giselle livestreams her premature death and later returns to haunt her male tormentors in the form of motion-captured holograms projected onto the bodies of live dancers, creating a haunting tension between live and digital realities. Highlighting the ways that Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook have profoundly denatured the ways we fall in and out of love, @giselle is a bracing new vision of a classic tale that also raises the spectre of persistent male power in light of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. 

The original version of Giselle, which premiered in 1841 by what is now known as the Paris Opera Ballet, is based on a German legend and follows a young peasant girl’s journey through the many dimensions of love and betrayal. Giselle dies of a broken heart after discovering her lover, Albrecht, is betrothed to another. The Wilis, a group of mystic and supernatural women who dance men to death, summon Giselle from her grave.