Minatures in Motion

Miniature Wilis stand ready to dance at the push of a button

Arline Smith is a maker of ornate miniature theatres. Last year a client asked her to fashion a live-action scale model of the ballet Giselle, complete with principal dancers, music and corps de ballet. Last week Arline put the final touches on the theatre and held a private performance for a select audience.

A tiny corps of tutu'd wilis stand on pointe behind a panne velvet curtain in a scale-model theatre, a fantasy of ormolu and verdigris, mini kliegs and servo motors. The little dancers - a handmade, mechanised ballet-in-a-box - patiently await the push of a button to perform...

A church bell chimed, the music swelled, and the burgundy curtain drew back, and there were Giselle and Albrecht alone in the forest, under the moonligtht, swirling around each other in a smoothly orchestrated, achingly tender, pas-de-deux. Arline's mini Albrecht is a dashing fellow in a dark red jacket, with gold sash; he has perfectly proportioned legs and a dancers muscular buttocks. Giselle and the rest of the six-inch wilis- from the tips of their toes to their bunhead wigs - are similarly perfect...

This version - it's from Act II - is eight minutes long; the full-scale human version is 38 minutes long. Arline watched a video of Giselle hundreds of times, graphed the music and the movement on paper, in ten-second chunks, and edited that; a computer expert programmed the result so the dancers would swirl and twirl on cue.

As the ballet ends, the curtain closes and the crowd goes wild. Someone says, wide-eyed, almost teary: "...I couldn't move." Me neither.

Condensed from article in The National Post, Toronto, Canada