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London calling
Boston Ballet’s ‘Royal’ Sleeping Beauty
BY JEFFREY GANTZ
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The secret to the lasting success of Tchaikovsky’s three ballets isn’t just their glorious music; it’s the psychological acuity of their plots. You don’t have to buy into one academic’s claim that the Nutcracker Prince is Tsar Aleksandr III and the mice are the Jews to appreciate how exquisitely both the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story and the ballet Tchaikovsky made of it are balanced between the reality of everyday life and the (deeper?) reality of the imagination. Swan Lake finds its Prince teetering between reality (the princesses) and fantasy (the swans), love and death (at first he’s out to kill those swans), Good Girl and Bad, even as Odette/Odile (why pretend it’s not one woman?) teeters between Good Prince and Bad Magician. And then there’s The Sleeping Beauty, which Boston Ballet opens next Thursday as the final production of its 2004–2005 season. It looks simple, especially to those who grew up with the animated Disney film: Bad Witch puts Princess to sleep, Good Prince kisses her and restores her to life. But Good and Bad are as complex in fairy tales as they are in life. It’s no accident that Aurora’s parents "forget" to invite Carabosse to their daughter’s christening: they want her world to be all Good and no Bad, so they try to exclude the old, the ugly, the ill-tempered. But is Carabosse a Bad Fairy or just a Neglected Wallflower? Is beauty only skin deep? Can there be roses without thorns? Birth without (menstrual) blood? Carabosse’s spindle is the thorn to Aurora’s rose, and as thorns are redeemed by roses, so sex is redeemed by love. The spindle is also the symbol of honest work in a world of royal privilege. Aurora’s parents give her cookie-cutter suitors; Carabosse, by putting her to sleep and surrounding her with a thorn brake, ensures that the Prince who wakes her will be not just Good but Worthy. It’s also no accident that Tchaikovsky doesn’t end in the same key he started with: the ballet moves from E (Heavenly innocence) through E-flat (manly heroism) to G (mature happiness). The past three Boston Ballet productions of The Sleeping Beauty, in 1993, 1996, and 2001, have built on the original staging by Marius Petipa and later Konstantin Sergeyev with additions by Anna-Marie Holmes, who was the company’s artistic director from 1996 to 2001. As current artistic director Mikko Nissinen explains, however, the ballet’s genealogical tree also has an English branch — Covent Garden opened in 1946 with The Sleeping Beauty and in 1949 took the ballet, with Margot Fonteyn, on its first American tour. In 1992, Boston Ballet acquired David Walker’s Royal Ballet sets and costumes for what was a Russian-oriented production; now Nissinen is reuniting the Royal’s choreography, with work by Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton, with those sets and costumes. The Royal brought its Swan Lake to Boston in June 2001; no one who saw that production is likely to harbor doubts about this one. As Arlene Croce wrote in the New Yorker in 1978, "The new Royal Beauty, supervised by Ninette de Valois, has everything it needs." The Boston touchstone for this ballet is the 1993 pairing of Trinidad Sevillano and Patrick Armand as Aurora and Désiré, one organism/orgasm in two physical parts; the Ballet has been trying to re-create that chemistry ever since. Carabosse is sometimes a drag role and sometimes not, and that’s how it’ll be in this production, danced by assistant ballet master Jennifer Glaze and senior artist Viktor Plotnikov. Pathos and not parody should rule here: Carabosse may not be a dancing role, but she’s a serious character in a serious story. Besides, no other ballet has more major dancing roles, from the six Good Fairies in the prologue to Puss in Boots and the White Cat, the Blue Bird and Princess Florine, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Cinderella and Prince Fortuné, and the Jewel Fairy pas de quatre in the finale. Just the ticket for a company that’s stocked — and for the audience that watches it. Boston Ballet presents The Sleeping Beauty at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District, May 5 through 15. Tickets are $18 to $98; call (800) 447-7400.
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