Sleeping Beauty

By Joan Downs

The Sleeping Beauty ballet was introduced to America in 1916 by Pavlova in an Orientally ostentatious production that promptly sank into obscurity. It was not until Margot Fonteyn and the Sadler's Wells company brought the work back in 1949 in a performance of pristine elegance that Tchaikovsky's Beauty emerged as the belle of the ballet. Now, fitted out with new staging and choreography by Rudolf Nureyev, and preening in an elaborate wardrobe of costumes and sets, the National Ballet of Canada's new Sleeping Beauty is on display at the Metropolitan Opera. It is a stunning production.

Nicholas Georgiadis, costume and scenery designer, has created a dazzling 17th century court and a forest that grows and gondolas that pierce thick smokescreen fogs. The dancers are sumptuously gowned in silks. Conductor George Crum, musical director of the ballet, evokes the heroic era of Czarist Russia in a polished interpretation.

Nureyev's choreography differs chiefly in its shift of emphasis from princess to prince. Other first-class productions that have been performed in Europe for the past 50 years have hinged on Princess Aurora while Prince Florimund never danced at all. In this production Nureyev's prince has half a dozen solos. They are uniformly pleasant--if unaccountably confined to traditional danse d'ecole figures and Nureyev executes them to glaceed perfection.

More important than his choreography is the effect of Nureyev's presence among the well-schooled but less experienced dancers of the young troupe (founded in 1951). Their performance is neat and crisp until Nureyev steps onstage. The intensity mounts, and the dancing, which had previously been clean-cut, becomes dazzling.

Of the four airy Auroras who dance alternate performances, Karen Kain is an unexpected delight. In the pirouettes and balances of the Rose Adagio, she sustains holds to the brink of disaster.

The visual impact of Nureyev's Beauty is staggering. Yet after a while the memory of the dancing blurs, overwhelmed by the lavish costumes and staging. As a dance vehicle, it is less than successful for an audience nurtured on modern dance; as a theater piece it is a triumph.

Joan Downs

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