The Sleeping Beauty at Pacific Northwest Ballet 2019

One Last Kiss

In every art form, people love to argue about what deserves to be included in the canon of classics. But there is no doubt that The Sleeping Beauty belongs in ballet’s canon. Premiering in 1890, The Sleeping Beauty creative team is a founder’s circle of ballet history – music composed by Tchaikovsky, dance choreographed by Petipa, dancers including Anna Pavlova and Petipa’s daughter Marie, and an audience of Russian nobles. The dance itself could be used as the basis for a classical ballet curriculum.

After 130 years, a ballet is bound to undergo some mutations, but the Ronald Hynd production that PNB presents is as close to the original as you can find today. It turns out that even the easy classes are better when you’ve done your homework. I attended the most recent Ballet 101 lecture and learned all about how this classic ballet differs from contemporary ballet.

You can watch The Sleeping Beauty as just another telling of a favorite fairy tale, a collection of pretty images on a familiar theme. Or you can watch it as a piece of living history, a time capsule of a nascent art form. Either way, it’s a joy to see. But this is your last chance, as PNB has announced that it is retiring this production after this program. The next time you have a chance to see The Sleeping Beauty at McCaw Hall, it will be something else entirely.

The Performance

I came into the performance with eyes peeled for all the details we studied. But in the event, my crude eyes were overcome with pomp and elegance. I noticed a lot of dancing on pointe and a sort of springy elasticity to the dancers’ movements that resulting from the classic emphasis on speed over long lines before I was swept up in the story and forgot to look for whether hands extended palm up or palm down. Ironically, I think I paid more attention to the technical details when I saw this ballet in 2014.

That doesn’t mean the dancing takes a back seat to the dresses, though. In some ways, these old ballets draw more attention to technique than modern ones. A contemporary ballet usually tries to make you feel something, the variations in a classic ballet can feel a little bit like watching people do tricks. Which sounds a little denigrating, yes, but even if the steps don’t integrate into a whole dance the way we’re accustomed to today, those dance tricks really are impressive. Ballerinas stay on pointe for whole solos, and oh, those lifts! I can easily write a couple thousand words on interpretative lenses, but it’s equally valid to say the whole ballet is just a lead-up for watching Aurora (Lesley Rausch) and Florimund (Jerome Tisserand) dance together.

Carabosse!!! On Ice

My daughter doesn’t care about ballet history at all. But she is a figure skater and huge fan of Yuri!!! On Ice, which means that her primary interest in The Sleeping Beauty was Carabosse. (Although tempted, I won’t post an illegal image here. Those who know what I’m talking about don’t need it; everybody else – Go watch Yuri episode 6, or better, the whole show.)

{Aside: Thanks to the Yuri wiki, when looking up the episode of Georgi Popovich’s first appearance, I discovered that Victor skated The Lilac Fairy to win the Junior World Championships in the Episode 1 flashback. I do love the fandom.}

Ballet Carabosse doesn’t get to do any of the fancy pointe work that the other dancers do. She (or rather he, because Carabosse is performed by a man; on the night I attended, Jonathan Poretta, another PNB classic you won’t get another chance to see, since he’s retiring at the end of this season) wears heeled shoes. But Carabosse is what is most interesting about the story.

Instead of fancy dancing to illustrate her temperament, Carabosse flies onto the stage, exhibiting her power. She is the only fairy not invited to the christening of the new princess. She completely overreacts and curses the little baby. Except wait. Carabosse is the only ugly fairy. All the other fairies are pretty, with virtue names. Carabosse means either “swollen head” or “hunchback.” So she’s ugly and probably disabled. Do we really believe they “accidentally” forgot to invite her? Do we really believe this is the first time that she has not been shown the respect due her as a magical creature? We’re meant to believe she is spiteful, but to me her behavior looks like the natural response to the repeated stings of microaggression.

When the curse takes effect on Aurora’s 16^th birthday, Carabosse is not acting alone. She’s surrounded and protected by a bunch of other hooded hags. Carabosse isn’t just one slighted person, she represents and defends marginalized people who are fighting for a seat at the table.

Or is it Bigger Than That?

There are indications that her role is even bigger than revolutionary hero. When we first meet Prince Florimund, it’s in a scene much like the introduction of Swan Lake’s Siegfried. But where Siegfried is a spoiled brat who doesn’t want to grow up, Florimund has a right to be disinterested. He’s surrounded by basic bitches (see the noblewoman toss the peasant’s offered flower in the mud) and has every right to wish for a girl like Aurora.

His good character is established, but from there on out he is the face of privilege. The Lilac Fairy (who is the only fairy besides Carabosse that seems to be able to cast more than one spell) shows up, convinces him to search for Aurora, and then guides him to her. When Carabosse appears, he kills her without hesitation, and gives not a second’s thought to the murder before turning to Aurora. Kissing sleeping princesses may have been the done thing in his day but reads differently in the age of #metoo. He’s not such a hero.

I can’t help but feel like The Sleeping Beauty is actually about a war between two powerful fairies, played out on the chessboard of human history. We see Lilac’s knight take Carabosse’s queen, but we mortals don’t even begin to know what supernatural stakes they were playing for.

Historicity

Speaking of Prince Florimund’s day (is historicity even a word?), The Sleeping Beauty has some interesting intersections. In the first two acts, it’s easy to imagine the story taking place once upon a time in a land far away. But when the curtain raises on Act III, the costumes are immediately recognizable as coming from a specific period in history. It’s easy to read the story through a lens of historical nostalgia, too. The girls of Florimund’s era are snobs, while the Princess Aurora represents all the virtues of an idealized past when magic was routinely invited in. At the wedding, past and present (the present of the new century) are joined, as represented by the wedding guests. These include fairy tale creatures as well as silver and gold – the agents of power in the dawning industrial age.

The best art can be interpreted multiple ways, and fairy tales are whatever we need them to be. That’s why they hold up, whether time passes through a century of sleep or 130 years of interpretation.

Tickets

The remaining performances are:

·  Thu, Feb. 7 at 7:30 pm

·  Fri, Feb. 8 at 7:30 pm

·  Sat, Feb. 9 at 1:00 pm  

·  Sat, Feb. 9 at 7:30 pm

·  Sun, Feb. 10 at 1:00 pm

·  Sun, Feb. 10 at 7:00 pm

Tickets may be purchased online. Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to each performance at McCaw Hall – these “at the door” tickets are half-price for students and seniors; $5 for TeenTix members. If you are between ages 20-40, sign up for ThePointe to receive discounts.

The Details

Running Time: 3 hours
Prologue: 34 minutes (15-minute intermission)
Act I: 29 minutes (15-minute intermission)
Act II: 29 minutes (15-minute intermission)
Act III: 37 minutes

Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Op. 66, 1889)
Choreography: Ronald Hynd (after Marius Petipa)
Staging: Ronald Hynd, Annette Page, and Amanda Eyles
Scenic and Costume Design: Peter Docherty
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Original Petipa Production Premiere: January 15, 1890; Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg
Hynd Production Premiere: 1993; English National Ballet
Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: February 1, 2001

Cast (That I Saw)

My god, that’s a lot of individual roles.

Princess Aurora               Lesley Rausch
Prince Florimund            Jerome Tisserand
Lilac Fairy                          Lindsi Dec
Carabosse                        Jonathan Porretta
King Florestan                  Otto Neubert
The Queen                       Noelani Pantastico*
Catalabutte                      Ryan Cardea*
Fairy of Beauty                Emma Love Suddarth
Fairy of Temperament   Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan*
Fairy of Purity                  Margaret Mullin*
Fairy of Joy                       Angelica Generosa
Fairy of Wit                      Sarah Pasch
Fairy of Generosity         Elle Macy
Duke of Acquitaine         William Lin-Yee*
Duke of Bordeaux           Dylan Wald*
Duke of Burgundy           Ezra Thomson
Duke of Gascony             James Moore*
Countess                          Sarah Ricard Orza*
Gallison                             Price Suddarth*
Bluebird                            Kyle Davis
Princess Florine               Leta Biasucci    
Gold & Silver Pas de Trois
Elizabeth Murphy           William Lin-Yee               Dylan Wald*

Red Riding Hood             Calista Ruat*
The Wolf                          Steven Loch

Puss in Boots                   Guillaume Basso*
White Cat                         Leah Merchant*

{I attended The Sleeping Beauty courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Opinions, as always, are my own.}