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[sylfiden]

Player's Name: S.
Are you over 16? Yes
Characters Played Here: Claude Bérubé | downplaying

Character: the Sylph
Series/Canon: Bournonville’s La Sylphide
From When? After the pas de deux/grand divertissement of act two.

History:
Wikipedia’s summary of La Sylphide | Note: There are a few minor differences between the version summarized here and the version from which I’m playing the Sylph.
The official English synopsis of the Royal Danish Ballet's 2011 staging of La Sylphide.

The story plays out on James’ wedding day. He is getting married to Effy, his cousin, a delightful young woman whom he loves dearly and everyone in the small village where they live is making ready for their union. However, on the very morning of his wedding, the Sylph enters his house and seats herself near the armchair where he is sleeping, watching him. Enamoured. She has been deeply in love with him for a long time, has watched him grow from boy to man and knows that now is her final, her last chance of leading him away. From his home. From Effy. Into the forests that are her realm.

She cools his thoughts with her wings while he sleeps. She observes the farmhands as they, too, sleep peacefully – scattered around the large living room. Seeing how no one stirs, not James either, she decides that it be safe for her to press a fleeting kiss to his forehead, but with a start he awakens and sees her. He asks her who she is, what she is doing there, but the Sylph doesn’t answer and instead flees up the chimney, leaving James confused as to whether it was all merely a dream.

James is shaken out of his stupor by the wedding festivities that begin unfolding in the living room, as guests arrive and Effy enters the room along with James’ mother, Anna. However, as soon as all the guests are otherwise occupied and allow Effy time to dress for the occasion, James finding himself alone again – the Sylph returns, throwing the window open and standing there, weeping with great devastation. This time, James asks her why she is crying and she tells him that she loves him with all her heart, meaning that seeing him marrying someone else breaks her heart inside the cavity of her chest. Claiming that her fate is bound to his, she attempts to lure him to come to the woods with her, but the two of them are interrupted by Gurn who has seen James’ strange behaviour at a distance while the Sylph has remained invisible to him. Quickly, James hides the Sylph in the armchair beneath a plaid and by the time Effy, spurred on by Gurn and her own jealousy, comes to look what hides underneath it, she has disappeared.

Finally, just as the wedding is about to take place, the Sylph sneaks in amongst the guests and appears before James. Dancing her most seductive dance and throwing his cap before his feet in total abandon, she once more – one last time entices him to join her in her realm, amongst the trees and the flowers there. He can no longer withstand her lure and he runs with her into the forests, leaving Effy to make a toast to herself alone. Her husband gone. Swept away on transparent wings.

Once in the forests, the Sylph presents James with everything that is hers. The trees and the bushes and the flowers in the glades. She also introduces him to her sylph sisters who come at her call, dancing in James’ honour, although none let herself be touched. Least of all the Sylph herself. After having fed James with berries from the undergrowth and given him water to drink from the clearest of streams, she explains to him that he mustn’t try to capture her, because her nature is not to be touched or held, but that even so – she loves him with everything that she is. James vows that he loves her with all his heart and all his spirit as well and they dance, all the Sylph’s sisters joining in.

Escaping, playfully, from this scene, the Sylph is fluxed into New Dodge at that point.

Personality:

The Sylph is, personality-wise, much like the element that birthed her. She is described in the original libretto as airy and lovely, adjectives that refer as much to her personality as to her appearance. She is light and gentle like the spring breeze, though her lure can easily come carrying all the heat of a late summer evening. Despite being an innocent by nature (since she cannot be touched and thus, can’t engage in sex), she can easily be very tempting and recognizes in James what attributes he would find most attractive, after which she employs them without any sense of guilt. As such, the Sylph is – to the human understanding – selfish to a fault, considering her own joy first and foremost. Not until she is facing death does she let James go, in order for him to pursue his own happiness.

Secondly, the Sylph is a being of change. She changes like the wind changes direction and her mood is, if not unstable, then at least fluctuating. Up and down, in response to her surroundings. One moment, she is weeping at the thought of James marrying Effy and the next, she is clapping her hands in utter delight that she may be able to convince him to leave for the woods with her. She expresses herself best in flight and dance, in motion where her body is set free – because the Sylph is like all sylphs and cannot live without her freedom, mustn’t be contained, captured and held down.

This part of her nature, however, gets in the way of her relation to James whom she is deeply in love with. The story of James and the Sylph is quite sweet, starting when she once saw him as an adolescent in the woods, hunting and immediately fell in love with him. Since then, she has followed his every step as closely as she could without being seen, watched him grow from child to adult, from boy to man and now that he is marrying Effy, the Sylph is well aware how it is her last chance of sealing their shared fates, before he binds himself to Effy instead. Such is the Sylph’s love for James, that she is willing to let herself be seen by him, despite the dangers it entails and that she, eventually, kneels before him and lets him wrap Madge’s scarf around her shoulders, causing her ultimate demise.

Thus, although the Sylph is indeed all of these things – carefree and gentle, selfish and illusive, changing and always in motion – she is most of all a beating heart that has chosen an object of affection which she cannot for the life of her ignore. That she will no longer be fully whole without.

Why do you think your character would work in this setting?

Although she would be fluxed in and thus come unwillingly, the Sylph would work well in the setting of New Dodge, because she is a curious being who likes to be around people and learn about them, despite her sylph nature which actually makes it dangerous business for her, interacting with humans. As a sylph, she would therefore meet quite a few challenges in her life as a New Dodge citizen, mainly because she must never be held or even touched for any extended amount of time, but also because her very being – fleeting and always fluctuating – will make it difficult to live a life that so resembles human normality. This is something I’d find it very interesting to explore with her, to see how she adapts as a sprite of the air to a life that is so completely earthbound, so to speak.

What will your character do for work?

However cruel it may sound, the Sylph would make a very good hunter, although she would only hunt birds, collect eggs and the like. As an air sprite, she would easily be able to find the nests and hiding places of the birds and take them down in the always compassionate manner that becomes her nature.

Inventory:

Nothing beyond the garments she’s wearing.

Samples:

Third-Person Sample:

The Recreation Center, they call this place. To her understanding, but the Sylph shall gladly admit that she understands very little of New Dodge. It is nothing like Scotland, nothing like the large forests near James’ little village and she is learning everything again, like a newborn sylph breathing in the air for the first time and letting her wings flutter with uncertainty. And even so, a sylph lives by instinct – here, her instincts are of little use. That she understands. Has come to understand.

There are trees in the Recreation Center, however. A forest! Not a true one, it does not smell like the woods from which she originates and the trees here are quiet in comparison, but there are trees and it adds flight to her wings. From delight. From the happiness of recognition. For a long time, she simply floats quietly amongst the trunks, bathed in the light falling through the leaves and warming her face. Spring! It was summer, when and where she left, but spring is her favourite season and she shall enjoy its benevolent kiss on her forehead when it is granted her, regardless of her cruel fate.

Like that, basking in familiarity, she decides that perhaps – and only perhaps, this little village of its own is not so horrible. There are people here and they can see her, so perhaps – and only perhaps, she can learn of the human nature until the time comes when she may return home. And perhaps – only perhaps, she can employ that knowledge to make James give himself to her fully and wholly, their fates bound together tighter than marriage, tighter than life, severed not even by death. Yes! Such must be her plot!

When she leaves the Recreation Dome, it is after having kissed the flowers goodbye and stroked the bark of a tree, encouraging them to flourish and grow. She is a being of the forest and of the air, she speaks their language better than the language of humans, but let it change! Let her learn! So that James might love her more and more. O, what an adventure that awaits!



First-Person Sample:

first breeze }{ video

[She seems to flutter in and out of view, as if she finds it difficult, staying in one place. Her garments are white and as airy as she herself is, appearing to constantly move in an invisible breeze. She is beautiful, but with an ethereal beauty that marks her as decidedly non-human. Her voice, when she speaks – to herself, because she has no understanding of the TC yet – is light and alluring.]

They say, by accident, yet this seems more like a witch’s magic trick than mishap. Is it an illusion? O, let it be a sleepless dream, so that I may wake up and find myself in the glade again – amongst my sisters and with James by my side, sleeping as sweetly as he did this very morning. [Finally, she comes to a halt, although her dress continues to move gently, touched by every single breath of air. Her eyes swell with tears, the shift from one mood to another sharp and sudden.] Yes, I was happy! Being loved by him, I was happy! How am I to live in the dust and darkness of the earth here when James is where I am not. Anymore, anymore. Ah, no greater tragedy has ever befallen any sylph!

[Slowly, elegantly – like a flower bending to the winds, she sinks into a heap on the ground, all but swallowed up by the large skirts of her garment. Her hands are planted on the ground, fingers scraping over soil and rocks, her naked feet already dirty from New Dodge’s dust.]

My wings, they are so heavy. The weight of stones has been added to their flight, to the beating of my heart. So tight my chest feels, my body – so heavy…