The neoclassical master George Balanchine may have resented 19th-century warhorses’ pride of place on the ballet stage, but he made an exception for Giselle. It was like Hamlet, he said. Every time you saw it, the work yielded up “something in it we hadn’t seen before.” Maybe the revelations are unending because the story perfectly suits the medium—acting for Hamlet, dancing for Giselle. Whatever the peasant girl Giselle feels—joy, worthiness, temptation, devotion, love, madness, insubstantiality, sacrifice, forgiveness—she feels as dance. For its popular and acclaimed 2009 production, staged by the Baryshnikov-era ballerina Cynthia Harvey, the Norwegian National Ballet is fielding four Giselles—Norwegian Ballet principals Grete Sofie Borud Nybakken and Melissa Hough, the Paris Opera Étoile Léonore Baulac, and a single upstart, the 24-year-old Czech Julia Petanova—in one of the biggest roles a ballerina could hope for. —Apollinaire Scherr