Diana Markosian: Fantômes

Inspired by Victor Hugo’s Fantômes, this series offers an intimate glimpse into the Cuban National Ballet’s production of Giselle. First staged in Paris in 1841, Giselle tells the tragic story of a young woman who dies of heartbreak and returns as a spirit to redeem her lover. In Cuba, the ballet resonates differently, reflecting a cultural legacy once upheld as a symbol of national pride but now shadowed by uncertainty.

In Fantômes, Markosian captures this sense of impermanence, allowing movement to stretch and fade rather than freeze in time. Her dancers appear to hover between visibility and disappearance, their forms dissolving into light and shadow. The result evokes not only the spectral presence of Giselle herself but also the fragile persistence of Cuba’s ballet tradition—haunted, enduring, and beautifully ephemeral.