E-Mail This Article to a Friend Finding equilibrium Boston Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty BY JEFFREY GANTZ
	The Sleeping Beauty Music by Peter Tchaikovsky. Choreography by Marius Petipa, with additions by Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton. Sets and costumes by David Walker. Lighting by Mikki Kunttu. The Boston Ballet Orchestra conducted by Jonathan McPhee. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Wang Theatre through May 15.

Fairy tales balance between explaining the world to us and protecting us from it. In the ballet version of The Sleeping Beauty, Aurora’s fate hangs in the balance between the six Good Fairies, who try to protect their godchild from pain, from sex (including menstruation and childbirth), and from death, and Bad Fairy Carabosse, who "condemns" her to life, one in which the right Prince might come along just once every 100 years. Marius Petipa’s choreography for The Sleeping Beauty’s 1890 St. Petersburg premiere finds the 20-year-old Aurora balancing, in the famous Rose Adagio, between dependence, as she hangs in turn on the arm of each suitor, and independence. The introduction to Peter Tchaikovsky’s score balances between the opening heroic martial outburst and the tender, lyrical reassurance that follows; only later do you realize that these themes, which might seem to represent the Prince and Aurora, actually belong to Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy, and that the ballet isn’t so much a battle between them as it is a balancing act.

Like any company that performs The Sleeping Beauty, Boston Ballet has to find a balance between explaining the world to us (art) and protecting us from it (entertainment). The company’s previous three presentations, in 1993, 1996, and 2001, balanced between London and St. Petersburg, marrying sets and costumes it had acquired from the Royal Ballet with Petipa’s choreography as staged by Anna-Marie Holmes. The current production reunites those sets and costumes with the Ninette de Valois’s staging for the Royal, which descends from Nicholas Sergeyev’s 1939 production with additions by Valois and Frederick Ashton.

The biggest differences are in the characters of Carabosse and the Prince (usually Désiré, here Florimund). The original Carabosse was a drag role played by Enrico Cechetti, and that’s how it’s usually cast; the Royal has seen memorably flamboyant interpretations by Frederick Ashton and Anthony Dowell. Here the part is divided between company assistant ballet master Jennifer Glaze and senior artist Viktor Plotnikov, but in neither case is it flamboyant. Whereas the Petersburg Gazette reported of the premiere that Carabosse’s rats devoured Catalabutte’s hair after she’d torn it out, here she contents herself with snapping her fingers in the ear of the hapless steward who forgot to invite her to Aurora’s christening. And at the end of Act II, she quails before the Lilac Fairy, scarcely putting up a fight. In most versions, the Prince makes a show of defeating her before entering the castle; here she’s off stage before the Prince even arrives, so all he has to do is follow the Lilac Fairy as she unlocks the great gate, dispels the forest, and points the way to the sleeping Aurora — and even then she has to cue him about that kiss.

Throw in a Garland Dance that replaces family frolicking with a genteel geometry for ladies only and you have a Sleeping Beauty that seems unbalanced, too much Lilac Fairy and not enough Carabosse. Patricia Ruanne, who staged this production for Boston Ballet, might answer that Carabosse has no real power to oppose the Lilac Fairy, so her bluster and posturing are just empty theatrics, and that the Prince wins Aurora not with swordplay but with love, so there’s no need for a sham fight. For all that it’s lucidly mimed, this Royal Beauty tells its story through dance, not dramatics. And the Boston Ballet Orchestra under Jonathan McPhee balances the Lilac-like doings on stage with a Carabossian account of the score that doesn’t stint on thorns and spindles. All the same, the scène that follows Aurora’s departure in Act II, a minute of music that Tchaikovsky marked "Allegro agitato," calls for some Princely pyrotechnics — at the very least a tour jeté or two. If he’s going to win the girl with his dancing, then let him dance.

Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theatres under Tsar Aleksandr III, conceived The Sleeping Beauty as an homage to the court of "Sun King" Louis XIV, during whose reign Charles Perrault published his Contes de ma Mère l’Oye ("Mother Goose Stories"), which included the Sleeping Beauty. That’s why the curtain rises on a French palace of the 17th century, with the male courtiers in heavy black wigs. (It’s also why Tchaikovsky used the tune "Vivre Henri IV" for the Apotheosis: it pays tribute to Louis’s grandfather, the founder of the Bourbon line.) David Walker’s palace-as-pavilion draws its sensibility from the signal French painter of this period, Jean Antoine Watteau: rich and massive in its interior, gauzy and dreamy in its panorama of sky. Vsevolozhsky’s vision of this era as a nobler, gentler time would benefit from better deportment on the part of the male supernumeraries — the Sun King would never have countenanced so much slouching.

The Prologue, which takes place at baby Aurora’s christening, sees the six Fairy godmothers arrive and perform their variations before a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning remind everyone who was left off the guest list. Petipa gave the first five Fairies somewhat eccentric names — Candide, Coulante ("Flowing"), Miettes-qui-tombent ("Beadcrumbs That Fall"), Canari-qui-chante ("Canary That Sings"), Violente — that at least reflect the character of Tchaikovsky’s music; this production gives them air-freshener substitutes like "Crystal Fountain" and "Woodland Glade." Last Thursday’s opening-night group looked tentative and a little tight, Sacha Wakelin meticulous but also self-conscious as Candide, Heather Myers precise but not flowing as Coulante, Lia Cirio’s Breadcrumb without much pop in her signature temps de flèche, Melanie Atkins too gentle for finger-pointing Violente; only Rie Ichikawa, her face more expressive than usual, was sufficiently animated as Canary. The line-up that performed Friday evening and Saturday afternoon was better, Misa Kuranaga an even more darting Canary, Vilija Putriute (Friday) and Kimberly Uphoff (Saturday) all regal amplitude and innocence as Candide, Kelley Potter a tightly sprung Coulante, Tempe Ostergren a piquant Breadcrumb, Kathleen Breen Combes a sassy, stabbing Violente. By Friday, the orchestra seemed less tentative, or at least a shade faster; that may have helped.