Sleeping Beauty Reviews, 2007

[Leigh Witchel]

In the Royal Ballet's late and unlamented Makarova production I noticed a trend towards the Killer Bluebird -

Must. . .resist. . .

Will. . .ebbing. . .

AAAARGH!

That rabbit's got a mean streak a mile wide!

Still, at this point, I don't think that anything Monty Python could dream up in a hypothetical version of Sleeping Beauty would be that far off something that has been done already.

[richard53dog]

This provides a very good explanation for why so many people from the suburbs drive into the city.

I was thinking the same thing myself, if you drive in (I'm another member of the bridge and tunnel crowd), you are not locked into a non-negotiable , Cinderella type deadline for getting out of the city.

But each year the traffic, at least from New Jersey, gets worse. It used to be that you might have to grit your teeth for up to a 1 1/2 to 2 hour trip in and get in compensation a 30 minute trip out , plus a flexible exit from the performance. But the difficult trips in have become more and more the norm and often the trip back to Jersey can be an 1 1/2 with traffic, construction, tunnel lanes closed for no apparent reason, etc.

Now I used a combination of driving to a PATH station (a commuter subway between NY and NJ) and using

the PATH train and a subway. Not great but I prefer it to bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end and the

PATH and NYC Subway run all night no I don't have that witching hour.

[cargill]

Well, the first Bluebird was Cechetti, so I don't think handsome young king was what the choreography was supposed to represent!

[volcanohunter]

A friend of mine, Edward Swift, interviewed Valentina Kozlova (I don't remember where it was published), who said (in summary) that Vera Trefilova hated the fish dives and thought they were acrobatic tricks. She refused to do them in Diaghilev's production, and did the original choreography, which has the ballerina swooning into her partner's arms. "A double pirouette and then she falls back into his arms 3 times as if his handsome face has swept her off her feet -- like three fainting spells. This is the version Valentina danced on the road in the US and she said all the critics criticized her for not doing the original. She WAS doing the original. We are so accustomed to those double pirouette's into fish dive (three times) because of Diaghilev and Nijinska.”

Which reminds me, in the film The Ballerinas Carla Fracci as Carlotta Brianza performs the three "swoons," and given the size of the powdered wigs that Fracci and Richard Cragun were wearing it's hard to imagine them doing it any other way.

[Klavier]

Well, the first Bluebird was Cechetti...

Other than that, what literary source do you have to support your interpretation? (I just found another thread on this topic under the "Sleeping Beauty" heading, and there are a couple of versions of the story given, but none suggesting the bluebird is "controlling" Florine or "menacing" her.)

[SullivanCA]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the board and just moved to New York City a few weeks ago. I am a huge fan of the site and an even bigger fan on NYCB.

I too was at the Sunday matinee of Sleeping Beauty and decided to attend just to check out Ms. Hytlin.

I will add though that I was more impressed with Mr. Martin's production then I thought I would be. I enjoyed it in the sense that for the most part I never got bored. The production had a nice pace and the dancing really kept my attention.

I have only seen NYCB twice. I will say that while I was impressed with the females, the male dancing was a let down. Aside from Mr. Ulbricht, none of the men caught my attention. I was also shocked and Mr. Veyette's dancing (he was Bluebird I believe in this performance). He struggled quite a bit with his variations.

I was impressed with Ms. Hytlin's dancing. Young and fresh, she does need to work more on strenghtening her technique a bit. She struggled at times during the partnering sections, especially with her attitude promenades. She also had this funny expression whenever she was tackling a turning sequence. Her mouth would open and her eyes would widen, almost like she was concentrating too hard.

That said, she has lovely proportions, beautiful extensions and is quite the jumper and turner. She really is something special and I know she will continue to do big things.

Tessa was lovely as Lilac. What a ballerina look this woman has. She is a strong, self-assured dancer. I think she just needs to work on broadening her expression and really letting go.

I was also impressed with Ms. Stafford's dancing. You want a technically strong dancer, she's it.

Sour notes for me included Ms. Dronova's variation. While I agree she's got gorgeous feet, she is a weak dancer and has difficulty with her technique. Also, aside from Ellen Bar and Stephanie Zungre, I wasn't overly impressed with any of the fairies.

[carbro]

I've been spending five days trying to decide whether the Saturday matinee was a breakthrough performance for Ashley Bouder. I still don't know. There are no straight lines or smooth arcs in the path of Ashley Bouder, it seems. What I do know is that this was the gift of a dancer approaching the peak of her powers. (What lies ahead boggles the imagination.) I noticed, in the Rose Adagio, how she took her balances, and as she slowly lowered her hand to greet the next suitor, she would nod or incline her head, it didn't look like a risk. It looked like a greeting. I soon stopped watching the technique and fell into a spell of my own. (BTW, as ViolinConcerto noted, Ashley did take each rose as a treasured gift.) There was so much to love in her performance.

No outscaled dancing here. Ashley was a model of regal restraint. But never did I feel she was holding anything back. She was all there, giving 110% of her spirit and her strength. After the finger-prick, lying still downstage right, it was still impossible to pull my eyes from her as the action happened around her.

Her dream scene was pure poetry. Bouder is not the first dancer who comes to mind when you think "otherworldly," but she was intangible. I almost thought I was hearing her as clearly as seeing her -- desperately pleading to her Prince to release her. (Thinking of this afterwards, I remembered how surprised I was by the poignancy of her White Swan. Odette and Vision Aurora, while closely related, are not the same, and she did not confuse them.) Beckoning from behind the Lilac Fairy, she was all vulnerability, finding in the dance her gestures and postures to tell her story.

The Wedding pas was marred not only by the moosh dives, already noted (my friend thought she stepped into the turn too far from Ben), but the highlight of the adagio -- when Aurora slowly rises from the floor to triumph in attitude was marred as Millepied began to promenade her before she'd even finished the pose. We wuz robbed of an emblematic moment. In the end, these errors in execution and judgment pale beside the glory of the rest. I was tearing up through most of the time Ashley was on stage.

I recently told a friend who was tempted to see a Beauty primarily for some soloists to be careful. I learned some years ago that even if you have a great cast of soloists, you need a good ballerina to carry Sleeping Beauty. I learned on Saturday that if your ballerina has magic, you don't even need soloists.

However . . .

Since I promised above to give my responses, I was ready, after my second Beauty, to praise Savannah Lowery for the progress she's made in loosening up her upper body. She still has a blockishness, but as Diamond in the first two Beauties I caught, she was almost unrecognizable fromlast season. Unfortunately, on Saturday, we got a big backslide from her.

I mentioned Amanda Hankes as the Lilac of Saturday Afternoon's class. She has gorgeous arms and a gracious presence. Of the Act I fairies, Stephanie Zungre danced nicely, but she must learn not to force a grin. Even from the last row of the Fourth Ring, it was distracting.

The fairies as a group were uneven -- but while I expected to find Rebecca Krohn miscast, she and Melissa Barak outshone their sisters consistently. In fact, consistency may have been the most elusive element in the run. Ana Sophia Scheller in one performance could turn in a strong, lyrical fairy variation in the first act, then bang out Ruby's dancing as if it were an athletic contest. And then she'd do the reverse it in another performance. I eagerly awaited Tiler Peck's Florine debut. Extremely promising, as you'd expect, but she should tone down that shiver that starts the pas. It almost looks like a shimmy. Abi Stafford needs to take care to keep her thigh turned out during the hops on pointe into retire.

Dena Abergel's mock indignation as the Countess was pitch-perfect all three times. And my companion noted on Saturday how impressed she was with William Lin-Yee's kingly King. Melissa Barak's Carabosse was proud and scary. Especially of the Lilacs and Carabosses this season, (except Tess and Melissa) I was reminded of an interview Renee Fleming gave 60 Minutes just as her international career was skyrocketing. She said she still struggled against the feeling, when she stepped out on stage, of wanting to say, "Will you excuse me, please? I'm about to sing." My earlier Carabosse, Maria Kowroski, didn't seem to feel she belonged out there. She (and both Bar and Hankes as Lilac Fairy) have to have the conviction that their character is important, and let Carabosse/Lilac, if not Maria/Ellen/Amanda, DEMAND our attention.