Reviews of ABT/Ratmansky Sleeping Beauty

[Amour]

Here is Macauley's review. No surprise that he likes it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/arts/dance/review-the-sleeping-beauty-reawakened-by-american-ballet-theater.html?ref=dance

[Helene]

He liked in in California, and without sweeping changes between California and NYC, it's hard to imagine he would have reason to have changed his mind since March.

[Kaysta]

Another good review coming in from the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sleeping-beauty-review-back-to-its-russian-roots-1433279187

[canbelto]

Robert Gottlieb likes it too:

http://observer.com/2015/06/back-to-basics-sleeping-beauty-returns-to-its-source/

[Amour]

Here's Macauley's round up review. Clearly, Boylston is his favorite new female dancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/arts/dance/review-the-sleeping-beauty-spurs-american-ballet-theater-to-work-on-the-details.html?ref=dance&_r=0

[tomorrow]

Just wondering what people think about Wendy Perron's review (a dissenting view amongst critics?)? Food for thought. http://wendyperron.com/a-new-sleeping-beauty-but-why/

[abatt]

$6 million.

[California]

Just wondering what people think about Wendy Perron's review (a dissenting view amongst critics?)? Food for thought. http://wendyperron.com/a-new-sleeping-beauty-but-why/

I'm so relieved to see Perron's dissenting view. I saw two performances (Murphy-Gomes and Vishneva-Gomes). I kept thinking how important it was to see this chapter of dance history, and how glad I am to have seen it (especially with such top-notch principals). But I also felt that I had to work so hard on appreciating it! Am I eager to see it again some day? Probably not, although if I were in town to see something else, I suppose I'd work it in.

[Drew]

As noted on another thread by Tomorrow--Wendy Perron is dubious:

http://wendyperron.com/a-new-sleeping-beauty-but-why/

I think she underestimates the emotional undercurrents and artistic seriousness of Fairy Tales and fantasy as well as perhaps undervaluing the fact that not only is Tchaikovsky's score arguably the greatest ballet score ever written but the choreography includes some of Petipa's greatest sequences and is foundational for 20th-century-and-after neo-classicism. It's a ballet that needs to be revisited by major companies and stagers from time to time and Ratmansky obviously has something he wants to say about it. (She does clearly disagree with that 'statement' when she objects to the way the production is danced. Some fans seem to feel much the same way, but by no means all.) Certainly Ratmansky is not just any old stager...but an important choreographer in his own right. I think, too, that unless there are plans to change its profile entirely, ABT is in need of substantive productions of the major classics and didn't have one of Sleeping Beauty. This production was worth doing.

Perron also doesn't see the need to revisit the ballet's celebration of absolutism (which I guess we can all agree we don't like )--as she made clear in a tweet linking to her article. Absolutism and its imagery are part of ballet's history, but in this ballet even absolutism has to accomodate to natural forces it doesn't entirely control (Lilac Fairy/Carabosse) which is also a theme not without currency in the modern world albeit translated to entirely different terms like "climate change." (Maybe we can think of Koch's -- that is, the ballet's main funder's -- climate change denial as a form of leaving Carabosse off the list, though doing so deliberately unlike poor Catalabutte.)

She talks specifically about the money that went into the production. Reasonable people who love ballet can disagree about what ABT (or its donors) should spend money on--and Perron is obviously one of the most knowledgeable--but I think she allows too little of the ballet's importance in making her argument that it doesn't merit this investment. And Sleeping Beauty can't really be done on the cheap.

[mimsyb]

Just wondering what people think about Wendy Perron's review (a dissenting view amongst critics?)? Food for thought. http://wendyperron.com/a-new-sleeping-beauty-but-why/

Amen! Ms. Perron has articulated very well much of what's been discussed on BA. I couldn't help but agree with her about the Prince's journey and arrival at the castle. If this were a Trockadero production (oh, if only!), the Prince might have arrived at the castle covered in brambles, overwhelmed by bug bites and with a torn sleeve or two. One really should earn that love. Sometimes the Trocks in their unabashed silliness get the emotions of a story exactly right. AND they probably would have made the Queen's hair-do even taller still! Eight years is an awful long time to have to wait.

[nanushka]

Well, one thing Wendy Perron is certainly right about: I go to Romeo and Juliet because of the relevance of its "violence between warring factions," and I go to Giselle because it teaches me valuable lessons about how "class differences can forbid one from marrying for love" and about how "recognizing your mistakes can change your life."

Good grief!

[Helene]

"The Ring of the Nibelungen," arguably one of the greatest works of art ever created, also begins with casual cruelty too -- casual in that it is meaningless to the doer(s) who sorely underestimate the damage done by the slight to the recipient. The Court, whose behavior is supposed to appreciate and codify rank, regardless of how "nice" someone is, has made a great mistake, like the bride who only "casts" thin bridesmaids who look good in the photo op, and a great omission, and the best it can do is shift the blame and ask Carabosse to be bigger than it is, instead of making it right. Carabosse has power due to rank, not just malevolence.

[doug]

I'm surprised by Wendy Perron's perspective--her literality--and disregard of the allegorical meanings in the Sleeping Beauty--its score, choreography, and score. To me, these are the elements that render the ballet both timeless and relevant.

[volcanohunter]

Good grief!

I know! What I really need right now is an emoticon with rolling eyes.

[abatt]

I don't go to the ballet for enlightenment or intellectual stimulation. I go for entertainment and escape, and to see amazingly skilled and brilliant dancers. Does she really think most of the audience is at the ballet for any reason other than pure entertainment?

[vagansmom]

I wonder if she's just generally biased against fairy tales? Her background is as a modern dancer whom I have often found to be very dismissive of the ballet fairy tales. Like abatt, I go to the ballet for beauty, for escape, for the scenery, the costumes, hair and even the makeup, but especially for the lush, gorgeous dancing.

And I'm not biased: I also love to attend contemporary dance companies' performances. My only criteria for dance is that I'd like it to be done well.

[Drew]

Ballet IS a great art and can be very stimulating intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically etc. It's great 'escape' but not just escape--or, one might say that even as 'escape' it shows how imaginative flights can add to and even deepen life.

But none of that that has to involve a direct representation of "serious" themes. Art can be light, it can be fun, it can be fantastical. Perron actually recognizes this aspect of Sleeping Beauty's greatness when she says at the end of her piece that she is glad Ratmansky restored all the fairy tale divertissements.

(It is hardly a new idea to acknowledge the psychological and other meaningful--if you will, "serious"-- undercurrents of fairy tales. The fact that the meanings often operate as undercurrents or allegorically, as Doug Fullington says above, is part of their power.)

Art also can make its appeal through form--whether austere or lush. And it can entertain.

Sleeping Beauty (in any number of Petipa-based productions including, in my opinion, this one) does all of these things, and I don't think it has to be or should be defended only as "entertainment"--though its value as a splendid entertainment is a very fine thing too.

[volcanohunter]

I wonder if she's just generally biased against fairy tales? Her background is as a modern dancer whom I have often found to be very dismissive of the ballet fairy tales.

I was a modern dancer myself once upon a time, and knee-jerk anti-ballet snobbery was something I encountered frequently--and found very tiresome. The first chapter of Doris Humphrey's The Art of Making Dances is titled "The Sleeping Beauty," and certainly she was dismissive.

...Serious subject matter, always acceptable in drama and opera, was unthinkable in respect to ballet--Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" was produced in 1835; Adolphe Adam's ephemeral "Giselle" in 1851. When Tschaikovsky wrote his opera "Eugen Onegin" in 1879 it was stern stuff, but in 1877 he composed the famous "Swan Lake" and thirteen years later the fairy tale, "The Sleeping Beauty." At about the same time, Ibsen wrote The Pillars of Society and Ghosts.

This is not to say that the ballet form was bad, but only that it was limited and suffered from arrested development--a permanent sixteen, like the Sleeping Beauty herself. So well established was the formula over so many hundreds of years that, as the twentieth century dawned with its flood of new ideas, there was considerable resistance to any change from the light love story and the fairy tale, and there still is.

With all due respect to Humphrey, her historical argument is tendentious, unsound and even funny (Lucia is serious subject matter? Giselle and Swan Lake are light love stories? Had there never been a flood of new ideas before the 20th century?). I'm sorry that 56 years later these attitudes persist in some quarters.

[ABT Fan]

I'm a bit perplexed by Perron's review. She's entitled to her opinion of course but I've never read a ballet review whose main critique was that it didn't spark dialogue about "life's dilemmas" and have more than one "single message". As others have said, I too go to the ballet to be entertained and to relish in the beauty of the art form. Why is this escape from all of our worries, hardships and the world's problems a bad thing? Art does and can imitate life, but must that be a requirement for it to be valid and important? If Perron goes to see Giselle to better understand how to deal with her mistakes, then that's her prerogative, and I've certainly learned a thing or two about myself from a dance piece or a painting or a great film. But when I'm debating which cast to see in Swan Lake, I'm looking for which dancers will best embody the main roles, in my opinion, not which dancers (or which production) will help me deal with my personal issues. A self-help book would be a heck of a lot cheaper than a ticket at the Met.

[vipa]

I'm a bit perplexed by Perron's review. She's entitled to her opinion of course but I've never read a ballet review whose main critique was that it didn't spark dialogue about "life's dilemmas" and have more than one "single message". As others have said, I too go to the ballet to be entertained and to relish in the beauty of the art form. Why is this escape from all of our worries, hardships and the world's problems a bad thing? Art does and can imitate life, but must that be a requirement for it to be valid and important? If Perron goes to see Giselle to better understand how to deal with her mistakes, then that's her prerogative, and I've certainly learned a thing or two about myself from a dance piece or a painting or a great film. But when I'm debating which cast to see in Swan Lake, I'm looking for which dancers will best embody the main roles, in my opinion, not which dancers (or which production) will help me deal with my personal issues. A self-help book would be a heck of a lot cheaper than a ticket at the Met.

Thank you for your well articulated response ABT Fan. I have to wonder if Perron applies the same standard to every book she reads, every play or movie she sees, or every music concert she goes to.

[Drew]

[...] I have to wonder if Perron applies the same standard to every book she reads, every play or movie she sees, or every music concert she goes to.

She does frame her reflections by commenting on the production's huge costs and also makes clear she didn't much like the style Ratmansky elicited--both concerns others have expressed on this board. But in her case, the concerns lead her into more general reflections on what would be worthier or more "serious" to celebrate ABT's 75th anniversary, and I think that--in that context--she altogether under-rates Sleeping Beauty itself (so to speak) not just this production.

I don't begrudge a critic having a strong aesthetic (or in this case anti-aesthetic) point of view and taking a stand on it...though the one expressed in this article isn't one I share.

(Whatever she thinks of fairy tale ballets, Perron has written quite appreciatively of classical ballet and classical ballet dancers.)

[choriamb]

I agree with many of the rest: I think Perron is too lightly dismissing the ballet as socially irrelevant. An artwork that points so resolutely to social integration that even the "villain" resumes her place at the end seems particularly relevant to our fractured world.

But I think the social impact of utopias (and comedies) is always given unnecessarily short shrift. Dystopias diagnose social problems...utopias point the way toward a solution. A simple critique is easy...an essayed solution is harder to get right.

And it isn't like we're suffering from a lack of dystopias on TV or any other medium nowadays.

[Jayne]

$6 million.

Well consider where the production was made; Italy for the sets and NYC for the costumes. The Euro makes the price tag high for sets, and the locations both have expensive labor and cost of living (not making a political statement, just noting the reality). If the sets and costumes were made in Argentina, where the dollar is very strong, then the production would probably be significantly lower.

[Amour]

Just wondering what people think about Wendy Perron's review (a dissenting view amongst critics?)? Food for thought. http://wendyperron.com/a-new-sleeping-beauty-but-why/

Food for thought, indeed. I casually know Wendy and like and respect her. I disagree that SB is the least complex of Petipa's ballets.and that it is not a ballet" that stirs complex emotions. For me, SB is about a young girl's (well, a teenager`s) growth into adulthood. It's also, like SL, about the search for love on the part of both genders. So I disagree with her on that. I think that's partly why I go and why the ballet remains so popular. On the Saturday evening performance with Vishneva/Gomes there was scarcely

an empty seat.

I do agree with Wendy about the style of the ballet. I, too, miss dance "that extends into space." And that "dance evolves for a reason. It adjusts to how cultures and bodies change" . I, too, question the wisdom of spending so much money on wigs and costumes, when ABT's lower ranked dancers aren't paid enough and there are way too few coaches for the company. So, I think there is lots of good food for thought in the article. Which makes it very interesting .

Wendy genuinely loves all forms of dance and all dancers. She emphatically dislikes (often expressed in her tweets) the kind of gratuitous negativism that informs many of Macauley's articles. For her to criticize a work is unusual. So I take the article as real food for thought about ballet, the privileged classes, etc. I certainly will be thinking about it the next time (probably) I see SB,

[Jayne]

If this were a Trockadero production (oh, if only!), the Prince might have arrived at the castle covered in brambles, overwhelmed by bug bites and with a torn sleeve or two.....AND they probably would have made the Queen's hair-do even taller still!

I imagine they'd have the Lilac Fairy (deliberately) trip over her dress getting into the boat, and then have both Lilac Fairy and Prince Desiree capsize, argue in the water, and show up bedraggled at the shore of the castle forest. Maybe run through some cobwebs and freak out as well. The Trocks can even use the old ABT sets and costumes from the Kirland/Chernov production. Re-name it "Snoring Beauty". (We should get book credit for their next season SB )