When thinking about ballet, most people picture scenes of ethereal leaps and turn-sequences, all performed by ballerinas donned in their tutus and pointe shoes. While certainly not an incorrect notion, it is definitely not all-encompassing of the art form: ballets simultaneously attempt to combine music, dance, and plot to create coherent stories. It is not unlike how a good paper strikes a structured balance between our beloved lexicon terms, which I was reminded of this Reading Period.

While recently watching dance clips on YouTube as a mode of procrastinating from studying and finishing my term papers, I was reminded of the ballet Giselle, a seminal work in the classical repertoire. Giselle shares much in common with its romantic predecessors, as its protagonist Giselle falls in love with a man named Albrecht. However, the story takes a dark turn in the infamous “Mad Scene,” where Giselle discovers that her beloved Albrecht is in fact a prince who is engaged to another, causing her to die of a broken heart at the end of Act I. Inspired to watch the ballet in its completion, I was struck by how composer Adolphe Adam manifested our conceptualization of key terms into his score. More specifically, Adam utilized leitmotifs as themes to denote specific characters, objects, or feelings. These musical motifs are exactly what we in the Writing Center refer to as key terms: a paper’s primary terms or concepts. By defining these musical renderings of key terms early in Act I of his ballet, Adam conditions the audience to recognize his leitmotifs, in turn enabling them to follow the themes of the ballet as the plot progresses.

This can be seen most evidently in the leitmotif that characterizes the relationship between Giselle and Albrecht, one that is filled with love yet also bitter deceit. This leitmotif is established during their first interaction in the coveted “Flower Scene” of Act I, a moment that unites each of their individual character-based themes into a single, combined leitmotif. Listen to the leitmotif in this video, starting at 7:55. Adam reuses this theme throughout the ballet, ultimately preparing the audience for the pivotal moment between Giselle and Albrecht, the “Mad Scene.” In this video of the “Mad Scene,” listen carefully at 2:12 for the same leitmotif. Through his use of leitmotifs, Adam continually reinforces the audience’s perception of the codependence between the score, themes, and plot. Adam’s utilization of leitmotifs in Giselle is a proficient model to understand how a paper’s key terms act like a thematic glue that ultimately guides the reader to a better comprehension of the writing at hand.

–Doruntina Fida ’21