E-Mail This Article to a Friend Second chances The Sleeping Beauty’s final weekend, and Pollyana Ribeiro’s farewell BY JEFFREY GANTZ

As Christine Temin pointed out in the Boston Globe last Thursday, one of the joys of ballet is the opportunity to watch different dancers interpret the same role. It’s nice to see the Globe starting to review second and third casts, and it’s true that in Lorna Feijóo, Larissa Ponomarenko, and newly promoted principal Romi Beppu, Boston Ballet has three distinctive Auroras, but you shouldn’t think this is the first time that’s been the case — for its 1993 Sleeping Beauty, the company cast six Auroras, all distinctive, all excellent dancers. Boston Ballet has never had an abundance of technical superstars, but it has been blessed with artists, and since former artistic director Bruce Marks arrived in 1986, if not before, the company has consistently sent out second, third, and even fourth casts worth seeing.

Along with its three Auroras, Boston Ballet had cast five men as the Prince for The Sleeping Beauty this time out, and I was looking forward to seeing the last two, Yury Yanowsky and Carlos Molina, during the production’s second weekend. Neither was able to dance, both being out with back problems, so I wound up seeing Nelson Madrigal, Roman Rykine, and Reyneris Reyes again — no bad thing, since the same dancer in the same role is always different, and often better, in the course of a run. All three made more of their treacherous Act II solo, in the process underlining that this is their equivalent to Aurora’s Act I Rose Adagio. It’s not the usual male monologue: no stratospheric jumps, no blinding manège, not even a tour à la seconde. Instead, the Prince expresses his yearning through extensions and arabesques where he’s continually changing position, reaching out while, like Aurora, having to maintain his balance. Dancing with Ponomarenko, Rykine evinced even greater gravitas the second time I saw him, the Onegin to her Tatiana. I’m told the third-act manège he did Thursday included a split kick on the beat; he didn’t repeat that Saturday evening, but he did rev up the engine. Saturday afternoon, Reyes and Beppu were more like Lensky and Olga, Reyes courtly and innocent, Beppu callow and innocent, her performance winning in its detail (falling off pointe once was more than expiated by the melting look she gave him near the end of the Act III pas de deux) but not yet possessing the deep vision of Ponomarenko, who sublimates those moments to the logic of her overall conception. On Sunday, Madrigal, easily the Prince most likely to be spotted wearing a biker jacket, found a sense of rapture in his Act II solo. Feijóo, diva in a good sense, continued to tease the most out of every moment.

Saturday afternoon also brought Sacha Wakelin as the Lilac Fairy. She’s not a dancer I have an easy time with: she does the steps well enough, but her smile looks fixed and nervous, and she doesn’t have much amplitude or nuance of phrasing or kinetic energy. Her Lilac Fairy was earnest but without the authority of Patricia Barker’s. A guest artist from Pacific Northwest Ballet, Barker impressed me more the second time I saw her; all the same, I wish there were more dancing for the Lilac Fairy in this Beauty, and I wish Barker could have radiated some of Melanie Atkins’s maternal warmth. Atkins, who didn’t have the best first week, improved as Violente (a/k/a the Golden Vine Fairy) and in the Act III pas de trois; I’m sorry she didn’t have another chance to do Lilac Fairy.

Viktor Plotnikov wrapped up the season’s Best Improvisation Award Saturday evening: when the carriage that brings Carabosse on stage careered downstage and threatened to tip him into the orchestra pit, he stepped out of his careening vehicle as if that were his ordinary mode of egress. He was an unexceptionably implacable Carabosse, but I still think a woman (in this case Jennifer Glaze) works better in the role. Saturday afternoon, Shannon Parsley was a beaming Queen, the quintet of Good Fairies — Vilija Putriute, Kelley Potter, Tempe Ostergren, Misa Kuranaga, and Kathleen Breen Combes — confirmed their excellence of the previous weekend, and there was again some nice by-play between Michael Johnson and Sabi Varga, Johnson’s English Prince stepping in front of Varga’s Spanish Prince to intercept Aurora’s attentions. And in the pas de trois, Potter and Melissa Hough, both corps members, put creditable performances on their promotion résumés. Saturday evening, Sarah Wroth’s effervescent Countess contrasted well with the maturity and purpose of Rykine and Ponomarenko.

Capping the weekend, and the season, was the farewell of principal Pollyana Ribeiro. She danced Princess Florine Sunday to the Bluebird of Joel Prouty, who had good elevation but huffed and puffed a bit. Ribeiro, who joined Boston Ballet in 1992 and was made a principal in 1999, has been one of the company’s signature artists, petite, fleet, spontaneous (to the frequent delight of audiences and the occasional despair of artistic directors), a dancer who as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Olga in Onegin, Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, and Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty was both distinctive and distinguished. Boston Ballet could have achieved a similar distinction by recognizing her final performance.

AND NEXT YEAR? James Kudelka’s Cinderella, with Art Deco sets and Roaring Twenties costumes, October 13 through 23. The Nutcracker at the Opera House November 25 through December 30. Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée March 9 through 12. "Spring Program" — a world premiere by Mark Morris, William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman, and Jorma Elo’s Plan to B — March 16 through 26. "An Evening of Russian Ballet" — Raymonda Act III, Les Noces, The Dying Swan, excerpts from Le Corsaire — May 4 through 7. And Jorma Elo’s Carmen, preceded by Balanchine’s Serenade, May 11 through 21. Given the way this Sleeping Beauty filled the Wang, people are already asking why the Ashton, which was hugely popular when Boston Ballet did it in 2003, is getting just a single weekend.