New York anticipated the arrival of England's Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet with keen interest. With ballet troupes in our own country in a state of flux, disrepair, and uncertainty, Sadler's Wells' appearances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music offered a revelation, or at least, a fresh sensation. This sister troupe of the Royal Ballet had not been seen in this country since its first American tour in 1951. New faces, new styles, new vitality--what would Sadler's Wells show us?
Company director Peter Wright's 1984 staging of The Sleeping Beauty is a lavishly royal and well-moneyed production presenting big ballet as romantics dream it can be. Designer Philip Prowse's aesthetics are simple--sheer beauty, sheer pleasure for the eyes. Envision sets painted in antique gold, bronze, and copper; costumes of exquisite detail and variety, often in shimmery metallic fabrics; high tiaras of golden filigree; chandeliers and candelabras; feathered helmets; intricate lace. An eighteenth-century court, its nobility, courtiers, and honored guests come alive.
Six junior fairies, attended by escorts, represent feminine qualities--Beauty, Honor, Modesty, Song, Temperament, and Joy--rather than wilder spirits of nature. Their solo turns are appropriately clean, effortless, and rather uniform and interchangeable in the Sadler's Wells' way. After all, they offer baby Princess Aurora her keys to success in society as a pleasing young lady. (Feminists may charitably presume that Aurora has been born with innate Courage, Intelligence, and Skill and has no need of redundant presents from sturdier fairies.) The Lilac Fairy is the Spirit of the Future, of potentiality and survival. She will make it possible for Aurora to live to be mature, pulling her girlish self together into a woman, standing as an equal (of sorts) to a worthy and very necessary man. Forgotten Carabosse is Aurora's own seedling shadow-self, magnified into monstrosity through neglect. The malignant fairy craves acknowledgement and acceptance--assimilation--or else she will weave a spell and wreak destruction.
Aurora has been born into an atmosphere of utmost normalcy and propriety. The well-mannered Sadler's Wells renders this without flaw. The basic lack of individuality of the dancers serves them best where it is most required--in ensemble work, seamless, easy on the eyes, ballet without a care. So, we look for an Aurora of special grace and interest.
Nicola Katrak danced Aurora. Her soft ovaline face, big, dark eyes, and sweetness suggested a most notable Aurora, Margot Fonteyn, but the tension in her arms and hands broke with that impression. Though her smile said she was tickled by the romantic attentions of her four worldly suitors, her tentativeness and awkwardness in the "Rose Adagio" could not be overlooked as youthful nervousness. We expect our Aurora to manifest a miraculous ease of balance--even without a Fairy of Skill. It's one of those elements of The Sleeping Beauty we chose not to live without.
Aurora must be special, also, because her Prince Florimund is required only to elegant and classical. (Indeed Katrak's prince, Petter Jacobsson, is finely poetic, carefully handsome, and physically and technically neat as a pin--a textbook danseur noble). He must kiss Aurora to liberate her and the court from death-like sleep, but it is her inner life that must radiate and animate all around her. A gorgeous Sleeping Beauty without a well-centered Aurora is
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