Empire Theatre, Eden Court, 15 January 2009

The Sleeping Beauty (photo - Andrew Ross)

IT’S VERY difficult to single out a star in Scottish Ballet’s excellent production of The Sleeping Beauty, which garnered a mountain of bouquets on its first outing last year. The choreography, the sets, the costumes, the orchestration and many of the performances were as good as anything you are likely to see anywhere in the world.

But to begin at the beginning…. Ashley Page has delved into the fairy tale, stripping away the Victorian refinements of Perrault and the sugary accretions of Disney to make explicit the darkness that lies in the heart of all old stories and is essential to their original purpose of teaching the basic lessons of survival.

In this he is partnered perfectly by Antony McDonald’s designs. The sets are sublime, subtly evoking Maxfield Parrish in the Prologue, Theodore ‘Le Douanier’ Rousseau in Act I, and the later years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in Act 3 with all the artistry, polish and style that was missing from last year’s Pennies From Heaven.

The costumes are equally memorable and utterly desirable, floating chiffons, luxurious silk crepes de chine, lavish velvets and feathery tulles. Not for nothing are Aurora’s cousins in Act 1 named Olga, Maria, Tatiana, and Anastasia – the exquisitely costumed, languid court melds the beautiful but doomed Romanoff and Austro Hungarian empires.

The shadow that is cast by our foreknowledge of the curse of Carabosse is compounded by our foreknowledge of August 1914 and the massacre at Ekaterinsburg, while later in Act 2 the fear of sharp objects elegantly recalls the dread of haemophilia in St Petersburg. However when the Christening party is transformed by the arrival of the Fairies we are suddenly transported to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because good or bad, these fairies are feral, decidedly inhuman creatures from another world.

So, what about the dancing? Page’s choreography, with its respectful Petipa cameos, embodies the best of modern classical style, loosening the corsets of Russian heritage enough to allow imaginative angularities, asymmetries and some beautifully fluid, gymnastic moves and lifts. Luciana Ravizzi excels as the Lilac Fairy, with her exquisitely graceful mastery of the mimed language of ballet. She is the fairy godmother we would all vote for, a steely, steadfast, implacable heroine who saves the day again and again, not only for Aurora but also in an exemplary display of multi-tasking for Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Belle.

Her wildly jealous sister Carabosse (Sophie Laplane, making the most of every moment) is channelling Elsa Lanchester, Joan Crawford, and Kiss of the Spiderwoman in dirtied down methadone green, while her porcine daughters are terrorists imagined by Clive Barker, avidly necking down the Doctor’s drugs to fuel a burst of ultraviolence. Victoria Willard is both watchable and believable as the chic and shallow Queen, a serial flirt with more than a hint of Princess Diana, partnered ably by William Smith as her King. The Blue Bird (Adam Blyde) and his lady (Tomomi Sato) are enchantingly avian, despite a momentary crash landing.

I saw an evening show following a matinee, so fatigue factors may explain some fumbling and a slight mechanical quality to some of the dancing, particularly in the first acts. With a beautifully played score, possibly the most achingly lush of all Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, there is no excuse for any lack of musicality.

Happily, the appearance of Soon Ja Lee as Aurora saves the day. She achieves the illusion of having an almost weightless body being moved not by mind but by the music – that elusive quality called ‘flow’. For dance to appear this effortless, to get that precision of pointe work and graceful porte de bras takes more sheer hard backbreaking slog than it is possible for a non-dancer to imagine. Her pas de deux with Tama Barry is in fact a pas de trois; the solo violin matching both the dancers’ virtuosity in an extended moment of exhilarating perfection.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

Links

• Scottish Ballet Scottish Ballet
• Eden Court Theatre