DANCE : Australian Ballet’s Dancers Must Be on Toes for the Challenging ‘Giselle’ : Audiences will see four Aussie dancers in the title role in the company’s first tour in the United States in 14 years.

If every actor wants to play Hamlet, every ballerina wants to dance Giselle. The challenges of the role prove irresistible and are equaled by few other ballets.

Giselle must range from innocent happiness and trust to heartbreak and madness in Act I, and she must suggest ethereal spirituality in Act II, all the time executing exacting dance steps.

Ballerinas can make their reputations responding to these demands, and virtually every major ballerina since the premiere in 1841 has appeared in the role.

Local audiences will have a chance to see four Australian Ballet dancers as Giselle during the company’s engagement, Aug. 7 through 12, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Scheduled to appear are Lisa Pavane (on Tuesday), Fiona Tonkin (next Wednesday), Anna de Cardi (Aug. 9) and Miranda Coney (Aug. 10).

Since the company is making its first U.S. tour in 14 years, all of these dancers are new to Southland audiences. The ballet will also be danced for the first time in the Performing Arts Center.

Created in 1841, “Giselle, ou Les Wilis” (Giselle, or the Wilis) is the quintessential Romantic ballet--mysterious, magical, poetical, ghostly and a testament to idealized love. It has the distinction of never having fallen out of the repertory since its creation.

The plot is simple. Giselle, a peasant girl, is courted by Albrecht, whom she loves, unaware that he is a count and already engaged. When she learns his real identity, she goes mad and dies of a broken heart.

Albrecht comes to worship at her grave in Act II and is caught by the band of Wilis--spirits of young girls who have died before their wedding day, and who exact their revenge by entrapping men and killing them. Giselle intervenes, however, and saves Albrecht by dancing with him until dawn, when the Wilis lose their power.

The plot originated in a legend of the Wilis as told by the German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine. French poet, novelist and critic Theophile Gautier read Heine’s account and decided it would be the perfect vehicle for the ballerina Carlotta Grisi, with whom he was in love.

Carlotta, a member of an illustrious arts family that included reigning opera luminaries Giuditta and Guila Grisi, was 22.

To fill out the story, Gautier turned to the librettist Vernoy de Saint-Georges, who fleshed out the plot in three days.

Choreographers included Jules Perrot, who created the major roles and who danced Hilarion, and Jean Coralli, chief ballet-master of the Paris Opera, who created the dances for the corps and the Peasant pas de deux.

(Lucien Petipa, brother of famed Marius Petipa who later brought the Russian ballet to its 19th-Century peak, was the first Albrecht.)

Composer for the ballet was Adolphe Adam, otherwise known perhaps most for writing “Cantique de Noel” (O Holy Night).

At the first Paris production, however, a Peasant pas de deux was inserted to please a wealthy patron who wanted to make sure that his own favorite dancer, Nathalie Fitzjames, had a prominent part in the production.

Adam would have nothing to do with the interpolation, so the music was written by Frederic Burgmuller. However, audiences found the added dance quite pleasing, and so it remains in most productions.

Indeed, the ballet proved so successful that productions rapidly followed in London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin and Milan. Inevitably changes began to creep in. Some of these were the product of genius Marius Petipa, who created four successive productions between 1860 and 1899, strengthening the Wilis scenes.

In fact, when “Giselle” returned to Paris in 1910-11 with Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, the production relied heavily upon Petipa’s last version, which had been notated by Nicholas Sergeyev. The Diaghilev production, which enlisted Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky, in the main roles, was recreated from the Sergeyev notation.

Most later productions, including the Australians’ 1986 staging by company artistic director Maina Gielgud, incorporate some reference to the Diaghilev version.

Although the focus is largely on Giselle, the role of Albrecht, too, admits of various interpretations. He can be a handsome but brainless noble who starts out to seduce a young village girl as a lark and gets more entangled than he planned. Or he can be a youthful idealist, bored and feeling trapped by the formalities of the court, who finds the spontaneous life he seeks in the love of a young village girl.

At any rate, he needs to convey that the loss of Giselle has transformed his life. And he must have heroic stature and endurance for the virtuosic demands through which the Wilis attempt to make him dance to his death.

The Australians will offer four Albrechts: Greg Horsman (Tuesday), Steven Heathcote (next Wednesday), David McAllister (Aug. 9) and David Ashmole (Aug. 10).

Of course, no one should overlook Myrtha, the icy Queen of the Wilis, or the corps of her haunted spirits.

For all their fierceness, however, the Wilis execute some of the most ravishingly lovely choreography seen in ballet. Indeed, one of the highlights of the work occurs when these dancers cross and re-cross the stage in symmetrically interlacing patterns, as Adam’s score mounts in beauty and tension. Audiences usually go wild, and even the hearts of cool-headed critics soar.

The Australian Ballet will dance “Giselle” and other works, Aug. 7-12, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $14 to $47. Information: (714) 556-2787.

NEARING 30: Ballet Pacifica has announced its 29th season, which will be split between the Moulton Theatre in Laguna Beach and the new Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine.

Programs will be at 8 p.m. on Fridays and at 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturdays.

The concert series:

* Feb. 15 and 16, 1991, (Moulton): Mikhail Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” (Chopin); Antony Tudor’s “Continuo” (Pachelbel) and Charles Weideman’s “Brahms Waltzes.”

* April 12 and 13, (Irvine): Molly Lynch’s “Eight Lines” (Steve Reich); Israel Gabriel’s “Duetto” (Barber); Diane Coburn Brunings’ “Hagen” (commissioned score); new ballet by Los Angeles choreographer Tina Gerstler, to be announced.

* May 31 and June 1 (Irvine): David Lichine’s “Graduation Ball” (Strauss); Lynch’s “Les Femmes” (Poulenc); a new ballet by Lynch, to music by UC Irvine faculty member Paul Hodgins.

A children’s series will be offered at the Festival Forum in Laguna Beach. Programs will be at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., with an additional 11:30 a.m. performance on Sundays.

Dates and repertory:

* Oct. 27 and 28, 1990: Alice Kahn’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (Delibes) and “Mixed Vegetables” (compiled score).

* Jan. 26 and 27: Lila Zali’s “Peter and the Wolf” (Prokofiev) and “Enchanted Toyshop” (Bayer).

* March 16 and 17: Kahn’s “Elves and the Shoemaker” (compiled score) and “Flitters and Creepers” (Shostakovich).

* May 11 and 12: Corinne Calamaro’s “Pinocchio” (compiled score) and Zali’s “Sunday in Vienna” (Strauss).

Additionally, Zali’s “The Nutcracker” (set to the Tchaikovsky score) will be given at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 18, 1990, and at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m., Dec. 19-23, 1990, at the Moulton Theatre.

Subscription tickets for the three-program concert series: $40 ($30 for students and seniors). Children series tickets: $22 for adults; $18 for children. “Nutcracker” tickets, currently available to subscribers of either series only: an additional $12.

Information: (714) 642-9275.