by Leigh Witchel
Alexei Ratmansky’s reconstruction of “The Sleeping Beauty” just keeps getting more lustrous. First done in 2015, he’s been tireless about research, adding in new things he discovered. Through four years of performance, there have been some overarching ideas:
The production restores the union of mime and dance. Mime fits seamlessly because it isn’t seen as separate from dancing. The first clue was in the prologue as the fairies mimed in unison. Throughout the 20th century, mime, when it hadn’t been pared out, was seen as either speech, with an emphasis on clarity, or décor, with an emphasis on port de bras and shape. Here, the mime is both clear (“We offer gifts.” “She will not die.” “A prince will come.”) and intensely musical, as wedded to the score as the dancing steps. The choral effect was identical to a dance.
Neither tragedy or comedy, “The Sleeping Beauty” straddled genres in a way that became confusing to us the farther it got from its origin. To get a handle on the narrative, the ballet is often staged now as a dualist struggle of good against evil with Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy as the opposing poles. Ratmansky has restored the original genre of the ballet – a ballet-féerie with an emphasis not on morality or characterization, but on fairytale magic.
There was a light, cartoonish sense throughout the performance that could be from Ratmansky – we’ve seen it in his work often. Or it could also be the actual tone – think of British pantomime or children’s cartoons. Keith Roberts made his debut the previous night as Carabosse, wearing heavy makeup with a prosthetic nose and clawed fingers. Carabosse was a cartoon crone, when she laughed, all you could see was tongue and uvula. Christine Shevchenko’s Lilac Fairy was serenely confident in her retort, telling Carabosse to stop and not expecting disobedience. There wasn’t any question who outranked whom.
Carabosse beat Catalabutte with her cane, but you’re supposed to take that lightly and read no more between the lines than at a Punch and Judy show. The same thing when Catalabutte or the king threatened the knitting women with hanging. A few seconds later the queen successfully intervened (Claire Davison, in a scene shorter than in many versions, got all the queen’s symbolism of mercy in with a look).
The production has lovely details from beginning to end. The opening court scene was opulent with gold and furs but also domestic; with King Florestan, played by Roman Zhurbin, overjoyed at how beautiful his new child is.
Ratmansky’s work was analogous to a conservator removing varnish, but the result wasn’t “The Night Watch” turning into a daytime scene. Mostly, the choreography had been pulled back from more than a century’s gradual accretion of complexity and frills. Legs didn’t shoot up; extra tricks were gone.
In the fairy’s dances in the prologue, rather than a springy leap to the side in the second variation, Stephanie Williams simply bourréed forward. Her traveling diagonal made only a single pass rather than doubling back on itself. The finger variation April Giangeruso danced was far more direct than what it has become. There were no pas de chats on pointe and the variation really was about pointing. In the U.S., we’re more used to Fyodor Lopukhov’s variation for the Lilac Fairy; Shevchenko did something with tough balances that floated and turned at the close. If you’ve seen the version at the Royal Ballet, that’s the more direct descendant of the original.
When Sarah Lane arrived onstage as Aurora, you could see the constellation of small, twinkling changes in her choreography, but they were of accent and emphasis. Part of the fun is working backwards in time to posit logical reasons for the changes.
The production’s costumes were inspired by the famed Léon Bakst designs for the 1921 London production produced by Diaghilev. Aurora’s skirt in Act 1 isn’t a short, high classical tutu but a slightly longer bell that just covered the knee. Turns in a high, modern retiré would vanish into that skirt; you could see them better in cou de pied. Did the position started creeping up, and the tutu got shortened, or the other way round?
Similarly, in the U.S., Lilac Fairy is cast tall, and it isn’t in the UK. Could that be because here she usually does the Lopukhov variation, which begins with the grand rond de jambes that look so beautiful on a long-legged dancer? The Petipa variation requires more strength than length.
The Rose Adagio felt largely similar to what’s come down to us. The biggest change isn’t for Aurora, but the appearance of eight young pages with violins who form the diagonal she bends down. Nowadays, probably from simplicity, budget and giving them more to dance, it’s done by the four princes. Yet another example of a change over time that likely happened for a logical reason.
Lane is technically adept and the textual variations and challenges in the older version didn’t faze her. Still, you’re not going to make it through this production if you don’t relearn the role. Turns in cou de pied are fiendish if you don’t practice them regularly; the balance point is totally different than in retiré. Lane still held the free hand en couronne in her balances, and nailed the first three. The final one was slightly shaky so she got it over with and forged ahead to the finish.
The Garland Dance was wonderful, both as choreography and as a primer on how Petipa negotiated the balance between density and lightness onstage. Much of the time he flooded the stage with dancers working in unison, or the counterpoint stayed simple. This waltz was more complex than Petipa’s Act 1 waltz in “Swan Lake”: the phrases were more fluid. But watching a Petipa group waltz is more like a kaleidoscopic Busby Berkeley number than you’d think. What’s happening looks more complex to the eye than it actually is, and part of the trick is not overcomplicating it.
The narrative was clear and like narratives before psychology, didn’t feel a need to explain the plot. After the Rose Adagio, Carabosse came on cloaked and handed Aurora a spindle because that’s the story. Aurora took it because she was young, sheltered and hadn’t seen one before. Moving right along.
For her reappearance Shevchenko changed from her tutu in the prologue to a beautiful tiered lilac gown, and put the court to sleep in a rain of soporific petals, guarded by her strange child attendants.
Herman Cornejo’s first appearance as Prince Désiré in Act 2 was stiff, but he seemed to think a prince has to puff out his chest and walk stiffly. The Vision Scene didn’t have many changes, The change in costume for the Lilac Fairy worked beautifully in context; what Petipa gave her to do looked best in a gown. Accessorized by a staff she used to brace Aurora for support, Shevchenko looked like a figure off a St. Gaudens coin.
The main change in the act was that Aurora’s variation was to the waltz often now thought of as “Gold.” The variation was more complicated than the familiar one of side extensions. This involved a string of en dedans turns in cou de pied. The journey to Aurora’s castle was short and bramble-free; a gold-winged ruby-eyed eagle guarded Aurora on her bed.
The wedding was staged with lavish costuming (including petticoated dragoons) and a full complement of fairytale characters. In 2017, when the Wedding was presented in excerpt, Ratmansky put in two interpolations from 1921, Bronislava Nijinska’s Chinese variation and Ninette de Valois’ Russian Trepak. Both are not in this version, a good thing as they were historically valuable but jarring.
Ratmansky keeps diving into archives for new information. Based on drawings by Pavel Gerdt in the Bolshoi Museum, he removed the fish dives in the grand pas de deux. Instead, the prince supported Aurora in an extension front, tilted so her back was perpendicular to the floor and her leg was pointed upwards. It seems very possible the fish dives were inserted to add in a showstopper moment. Your approval of that is going to depend on how much you like showstoppers.
Lane and Cornejo were utterly secure in their dancing. If Cornejo seemed stiff when he was acting, that wasn’t the case when he danced – the pas and variations were extraordinarily precise. Cornejo unspooled a series of air turns in cou de pied as neat as stitchery. In Lane’s variation the side to side sissonnes had a little pas de chat first to accent them, one of the few steps in the ballet that got simpler rather than more complicated. The famed diagonal inching across the stage on pointe was the same, and Lane was able to fill it out in all its simplicity.
Other things stayed the same, such as the attitude from the floor raising up into pointe. The final pose was still a dive, but instead of Aurora being tossed upwards, Lane flew at Cornejo before the last dip. It was also done with one hand, rather than handless.
In supporting roles, Devon Teuscher sparkled in the Diamond solo, with lush and vibrant movement in every phrase and a radiant carriage of her chest. The Bluebird pas de deux marked a debut for Katherine Williams. Neither she nor Blaine Hoven had any trouble. Ratmansky’s staging was far less tweetybird than current stagings, with less fluttering and flapping. It was a classical duet in bird costumes, not a bird duet. Hoven’s variation was much shorter than the current version by a full repeat was inserted later but it still looked tiring; he was in the air much of the time and did beautiful à la seconde jumps in a semi-circle. Williams etched the variation with clear pointe work and deftly negotiated the tricky turns and balances.
Of two variations usually cut for length, “Cinderella” made a case for itself when danced by Lauren Bonfiglio and Calvin Royal III. It was lovely if oddly comic in tone; Bonfiglio humorously rebuffed Royal with fireplace bellows. Hop-o’-my-Thumb still couldn’t justify its inclusion. It involved kids and cannibalism. Really, it’s OK to cut it.
Ratmansky’s window into the baseline version of “The Sleeping Beauty” is invaluable. But it also showed that change isn’t always deterioration, but often an understandable development or response.
What gives this production its luster isn’t Ratmansky’s fidelity to Petipa, that’s a symptom rather than the cause. If there are fish dives or not, or Lopukhov’s variation versus Petipa’s, doesn’t matter as much as that his concerted efforts to create a faithful production provided a consistent point of view. What makes this “Beauty” so luxurious is not that it’s frozen in time, but woven of whole cloth.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Sleeping Beauty” – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
July 2, 2019
Cover: Sarah Lane and Herman Cornejo in “The Sleeping Beauty.” Photo © Rosalie O’Connor.
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