Beautification

The Kirov reconstructs a classic

by Marcia B. Siegel

More than just another showpiece in the grandest classical style, The Sleeping Beauty is a symbolic ballet. Its theme -- the continuity of benevolent but absolute power despite trials and historical accidents -- places it in close proximity to many of the 20th century's cultural and political struggles.

The Sadlers Wells (now the Royal Ballet) staged Beauty in 1948 as a symbol of England's recovery from World War II, as well as British ballet's entry into the ranks of world culture and its rescue of then-eclipsed Russian art from the neglect of the Soviets. An opulent Oliver Messel version constituted American Ballet Theatre's shot at world-class balletdom in 1976. And New York City Ballet mounted a complete though semi-updated Beauty as a sign of its determination to survive the death of George Balanchine, himself an inheritor and reformer of the Kirov/Sleeping Beauty tradition.

Now we have the Kirov (Maryinsky) emerging from recent economic and administrative turmoil to invest enormous resources in a reconstruction of the original 1890 production. With decor and costumes copied from earliest designs and photographs, and Marius Petipa's choreography reconstituted from Stepanov notation scores housed in the Harvard Theater Collection, the new Sleeping Beauty aims to be purer, more authentic, and in every way more the paradigm of Russian classicism than all of its variously modernized descendants.

I got to see one of the four performances the Kirov brought on its tour to New York's Metropolitan Opera House last week, and it raised some provocative questions for me. The 19th-century classics are always pastiche productions today, having gone through big and small changes as they traipse from one company to another, adjusting to the capabilities of dancers, the creative urges of resident choreographers, the inevitable shortcuts and economizing, the stylistic tastes of this or that decade. My idea of what Petipa's ballets looked like is probably a composite of selections I've seen that "look right," rather than any fixed template of a choreographic scheme or style.

The Kirov's solo work seemed authentic, but the solos of any big ballet do become quite standardized across the repertory. They get taught personally by one dancer to another. Because they're performed by the stellar personages in any company, we remember them clearly; and we notice more acutely if steps are left out or changed. I've always thought Petipa was great at ensembles as well as sparkling, virtuosic solos, perhaps because of the remarkable inventions of his latter-day disciple Balanchine. But the Kirov's corps de ballet numbers seemed staid and, except for some clever contrapuntal groupings in the Prologue, obsessively locked into line-ups facing the audience.

A big dramatic ballet like Sleeping Beauty is more than choreography, though. The sparer, more concentrated tendencies of the recent past may have pointed away from spectacle, but ballet at the Maryinsky was also a popular entertainment, so it featured acting, extravagant stage effects, acrobatics, and pageantry as well as dancing. Here I thought the Kirov's efforts weren't always an improvement. Having restored a lot of the mime that's been dropped over the years, the company went for an extremely broad, formal but low-key acting style. The dancers playing the King (Vladimir Ponomarev) and the wicked fairy Carabosse (Igor Petrov) looked as if they were a bit embarrassed to be playing these rival superpowers, or afraid that if they let loose their characters' passions, something really terrible would happen.

What I liked a lot about the production was the restoration of courtly pomp and circumstance. The Prologue and each of the three acts started with all-out processions, not just formal arrivals. Russian Imperial ballet, and this ballet in particular, proudly showed off the attributes of the monarchy. Set roughly in the 17th century of Louis XIV, Sleeping Beauty celebrates the era of French culture so admired by the Russian tsars who presided over the building of St. Petersburg and the great imperial theaters.

But the court entertainments at Versailles also projected back, back, to the Renaissance and to antiquity. The six well-wishing fairies at Aurora's christening bring symbolic gifts and are accompanied by exotic attendants, all in the style of the ballet de cour, those masque-like entertainments that linked the aristocratic spectators to the marvels of Greek mythology. The final apotheosis, with backcloths unrolling and tunic-clad cherubs settling into place, revealed a wonderful tableau: Apollo/the Sun King/Tsar Alexander in his (painted) horse-drawn chariot welcoming the Lilac Fairy, Aurora and Prince Désiré, and all their courtiers and subjects -- and the audience -- into his realm of light. Modern technology couldn't have done this half so marvelously.