SAN JOSE — Adolphe Adam’s ballet “Giselle” is about a young girl who rises from the dead. Fittingly, the sets for San Jose company New Ballet’s production of the 1841 Romantic ballet have been resurrected — from a Santa Cruz company, no less!
The houses displayed in “Giselle,” which premieres Saturday at the Hammer Theatre Center in San Jose, had previously been built and used for Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre prior to its closure in 2024. Diane Cypher, longtime artistic director of Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre donated the sets, which Dalia Rawson — founder and director of New Ballet — said played a major role in the company staging a production as elaborate as “Giselle.”
“Building set pieces like that, it would have been impossible for us because it’s too expensive,” she said. “We don’t even have a scenic shop. There are very few scenic artists left in the Bay Area after the pandemic, and those who are here are fully booked up.”
Cypher said the set pieces — consisting of Giselle’s house and a storage room — were built for Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre’s production of “Giselle” in the spring of 2022 and never used again. She has donated other set pieces since the company’s closure. The Dr. Seuss-inspired set pieces from the 2024 production of “Ballet de Seuss” were given to North Coast Ballet California in Petaluma, and pieces from the annual performance of “The Nutcracker” have been used to decorate the lobby of the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium for the Santa Cruz Symphony’s Holiday Pops Concerts.
“They were a new creation for us, and I wanted them to have a good home,” she said of the Giselle set pieces.
Cypher figured New Ballet would eventually do a production of “Giselle” and presented Rawson with photos of the sets. Rawson accepted the pieces.
“They’re really lovely,” she said. “They evoke storybook charm.”
New Ballet was founded by Rawson in 2016 following the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Ballet, where she had been running the school. The biggest casualty of the bankruptcy was $200,000 in tuition payments from families which she did not want to see go to waste. She filed paperwork, and New Ballet got its nonprofit designation a few months later.
“I founded New Ballet quite literally overnight,” she said. “We did some quick fundraising, I volunteered for six months, my entire staff volunteered for a period of time and we were operating in the black within four months.”
Initially starting as solely a school, New Ballet expanded into a professional company in 2019. In addition to teaching students of all ages and levels, the company has put on a range of productions, including “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty,” yearly performances of “The Nutcracker” and an annual program called “Fast Forward” where dancers work with choreographers from around the country on pieces made specifically for them.
For the 2026 season, Rawson polled audiences on what productions they wanted to see in 2026: “Sleeping Beauty,” “Peter Pan” or “Giselle.” Audiences voted in favor of “Giselle,” which New Ballet had performed in the past, and the vote coincided with Cypher donating the set pieces.
“All those things lined up, and we decided to give it a try,” said Rawson.
“Giselle” tells the story of a young peasant girl who falls in love with a young villager named Albrecht, who unbeknownst to her is a young nobleman who is engaged to the daughter of a duke. When Giselle learns his true identity, she dies of a broken heart but is summoned from her grave by the ghosts of other unwed women betrayed by their lovers who go to seek revenge.
Stefana Seizovic and Jack Concordia dance in New Ballet’s spring production of “Giselle.” (Contributed — Tony Abello)
Rawson likes the approach the ballet takes as a love story with supernatural elements.
“It’s a little bit morbid, but it’s a lot of fun,” she said.
Rawson particularly likes the character of Giselle, who she described as “the Hamlet of ballet.”
“It requires the most artistically and emotional range,” she said, noting that the character goes from conveying joy to sadness to vengeance to love.
Rawson said New Ballet’s production of “Giselle” would be a new restaging, with orchestration by London-based composer John Longstaff, a recreated peasant dance from the first act and more emphasis on the ghostly elements.
“When the ballet premiered at the height of the Romantic era in the mid-1800s, of course we didn’t have anything like projection or any of the fancy special effects one can see onstage today, but through lighting, through almost classical magic tricks, there are some moments that we’ve included in the ballet that I think add a lot of old world charm,” she said.
And, of course, there are the sets. When Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre did its production of “Giselle” in 2022, Cypher said she had a student whose father, Jake Lackey, operated Lackey Woodworking. She asked Lackey if he wanted to build a set, and he went to work on pieces that met her parameters.
“The sets were built so that they fold completely flat, kind of like if you buy something from Ikea,” she said.
Lackey built Giselle’s house, an old European cottage with a door that opens and closes in front, and a flower box that allows Giselle to pick a daisy and pull off petals to invoke the “He loves me, he loves me not” game. He also built a storage room which local gamekeeper Hilarion breaks into and finds Albrecht’s sword in a crucial plot point.
“They’re both really integral to the story,” she said. “It would really be very difficult to do ‘Giselle’ without these two set pieces.”
The sets were constructed out of wood and painted by Lily Swan, another Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre dancer. Rawson said the sets also inspired the characters’ costumes.
“The dresses that the peasants wear in the first act are inspired in part by the colors of these houses,” she said.
Rawson loved the designs of the houses which she said evoked a whimsical atmosphere.
“The colors in the windows, you’re seeing into a fairytale cottage, and they glow with the fire harvest,” she said. “They’re really magical. I love them.”
Cypher is pleased to see the set pieces find a new home.
“I just didn’t want to see them languish, so I’m very, very happy that they’re going to be given new life again,” she said.
Rawson said “Giselle” is a very inspiring production, as she noted a lot of art centered around tragedy focuses on hopelessness while “Giselle” offers a cleansing, redemptive storyline.
“It’s a very uplifting experience to watch the whole ballet,” she said. “Although it has a sad ending, we end up believing in true love.”
“Giselle” premieres at 2 p.m. Saturday with additional performances at 7 p.m. that evening and 2 p.m. Sunday. There will also be a shortened version for preschoolers and toddlers under the “My Very First Ballet” banner at 11 a.m. Sunday. All performances are at the Hammer Theatre Center, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose. Tickets range from $29 to $122. For information, go to NewBallet.com/spring.