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Reviews

Sleeping Beauty, An Experiment

The Kirov’s The Sleeping Beauty:
turning balletic time back with supermodern ballerinas for audiences with an eye on the clock

by George Jackson
copyright © 1999 by George Jackson
Autumn 1999

There were plenty of reasons to look forward to The Sleeping Beauty that opened the Kirov Ballet’s visit at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The work itself is the finest surviving example of the late nineteenth century’s grandiose dance classicism. The promise of restoring what “was seen by Tsar Alexander over 100 years ago” hinted at adventures in time travel. Reputed to be technically and stylistically demanding, Marius Petipa’s original choreography would test a largely new generation of Kirov/Maryinsky dancers, the first to emerge in a Russia free of authoritarian restraints. The ballet would also be the calling card of the several recently promoted teachers, coaches and directors working in St. Petersburg, who had produced these dancers and revived the work. Not least, it would be possible at these performances to experience an experiment in authenticity as a member of a knowledgeable audience, and one not divided by having to choose between the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre sides of the Lincoln Center plaza — everyone interested in ballet would be there.

Having first seen The Sleeping Beauty’s second night (not the opening night, 28 June 1999), I was disappointed. My only other view, the next afternoon (from a different vantage, not an Orchestra seat but from above in Family Circle), confirmed this feeling. Yet on June 29, the Prologue had been intriguing and I went out at first intermission feeling positive and still expectant. Even at the June 30 matinee, the Prologue made me wonder whether I might change my mind. First of all, there was the varied pace of things, and what that permitted. The dancing, the deportment, even the undanced music had several degrees of slow, fast and moderate, which provided much more nuance than usual. During very slow passages and pauses, the performers had the time for behavior seldom seen anymore. A pungent instance came at the conclusion of the fairies’ adagio with their cavaliers. As these partners sank into a one-knee kneel and each fairy—Candor, Flowing Farina Flower, Tumbling Breadcrumbs, Singing Canary, Strong Temperament, and Lilac—came to sit on her cavalier’s steadfast knee, she exchanged a look of satisfaction with her sisters. This was just before the thunder rolls that announce danger, ugliness and evil in the person of Fairy Carabosse (Petrified Protu- berance), and all still seemed well with the world. Yet, with those glances, the Good Fairies suddenly ceased being otherworldly and magical. They became women of flesh, bone, blood and baubles. The full impact of this realization hit only in the three succeeding acts.

Setting the choreography within a nineteenth century picture seemed apt for authenticity’s sake. There wasn’t, though, much stylistic match among the scenic concepts for the different acts, and designs by Levot, Botcharov, Andreyev, Ivanov and/or Shishkov correspond unsatisfactorily with each other and with the costume ideas of the ballet’s conceiver and co-librettist, Ivan Vsevolozhsky. Revivals of other ballets have taught us that the “static” properties of a production can alter the movement and action dramatically. Just imagine how senseless Massine’s symphonic ballets would appear without their drops and drapes by Masson or Dali. In Hassreiter’s 1888 Die Puppenfee, no one involved in the 1983 reconstruction realized until the dress rehearsal that Franz Gaul’s horizontally striped skirts for the Styrian dolls would create a rainbow effect as the line of dancers moved across the stage, turning.

Most settings for productions of The Sleeping Beauty have contributed to grandeur. In this staging, the scenery and costumes bestowed, too, a heaviness. Yet this unwanted gift could have served to let the dancing burst forth all the more lightly. That didn’t happen. Instead, the female dancers’ bare, nearly bare or seemingly bare body parts—arms, shoulders, neck and legs—stood out from the decorative embellish- ments of the tutus and the detail in the painted sets. Poses that were appealing and pas that were propitious—devised by Petipa for, mostly, the women—appeared to be not filigree constructs intended to match Tchaikovsky’s music, but clever ways of exposing physical attractions. The rotation of the upper torso to cross the plane of the stance seemed intended not to vary the possibilities of placing the geometric planes of the body, but an arch enticement to plant a kiss on the naked forward shoulder. A turn of the head away from frontal exposes an ear lobe, with its droplet of a pearl or jewel—what a temptation to suckle or nibble. Petipa was a panderer!

No one sensible has ever denied the physical attraction that is part of the experience of watching dance. But in this production the point of the dancing seemed to be the erotic. The conflict of light and darkness, and of order and disorder, as well as the apotheosis of art—themes long associated with The Sleeping Beauty—became diminished and, for stretches at a time, totally disappeared. Where did the fault lie? With Petipa’s original or with the particulars of these performances?

There’s no question that the Prologue was the part of the ballet most carefully reconstructed and rehearsed. Even so, the confrontation between Fairy Lilac and Fairy Carabosse lacked the epic dimensions of other productions. Act I did establish the freshness and joy of the young Aurora, although not as wonderously as in the old Sadler’s Wells staging in which Aurora’s entrance took up all of the music Tchaikovsky gave it: from afar, we saw the Princess approach the garden party eagerly, pause shyly for a moment, then proceed resolutely. Her skipping advance was dancing, not walking.

Next, in this Kirov Act II, Aurora wasn’t a Vision (almost insensible, like Giselle on first emerging from her grave) but seemed as full-bodied as in Act I. The following fault wasn’t the Kirov’s: Prince Desiré’s journey and penetration into Aurora’s slumbering realm lacked adventure and drama because it was too difficult to install the traveling Panorama scene at the Met. Finally, in Act III, the dominance of the new characters, the Fairies of the Precious Stones and Rare Ores, and of the painted Apollo apotheosis, plus the subordinate status given to the Lilac Fairy and Fairy Carabosse was totally unsatisfactory; continuity and relevance were lacking.

Revisions seldom improve a work of art, but in the case of The Sleeping Beauty, some changes may have helped. One can’t be sure, of course, because aspects of this ballet’s performance history are elusive. No one doubts that The Sleeping Beauty was premiered 1890 by the Imperial Ballet of the Mary- insky Theater in St. Petersburg. Carlotta Brianza danced and mimed the title role of Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty. Was this first version “complete” in the sense of using the total concept and Tchaikov-sky’s music in its entirety? Probably not, according to the founder of the Tchaikovsky Foundation, who concluded that cuts were made in the 1890 Panorama scene, the Prince’s journey to Aurora.

About the ballet’s second production, 1896 at Milan’s La Scala, later. The third production, 1898/1899 at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater and staged by Alexander Gorsky, was based on Stepanov notations Gorsky had made of Maryinsky performances between 1890 and 1898. What has become of those notes?

Ivan Clustine, a Moscow dancer and choreo- grapher, probably derived his 1916 condensation of The Sleeping Beauty for Pavlova’s touring company from Gorsky’s staging. Sergei Diaghilev’s revival, called The Sleeping Princess (1921, with the Ballets Russes at London’s Alhambra), had several sources. In part it came from a second set of Stepanov notations. These were made of Maryinsky performances in the early 1900s by ballet master Nicholas Sergeyev. However, several members of the Diaghilev company, includ-ing principal teacher Enrico Cecchetti (the original Fairy Carabosse and Bluebird) knew the choreography from Russia. Brianza, who had been asked by Diaghilev to help with the staging and dance Aurora again, but preferred to be the run’s principal Fairy Carabosse, knew both the Maryinsky and La Scala versions in which, of course, she had danced the title role. While some of the divertissement changes made for Diaghilev are on record, it is difficult to surmise how emphatically the ballet’s grand themes were stated.

Certainly the 1946 Sadler’s Wells production at London’s Covent Garden—with input from Sergeyev, Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton—gave beauty and ugliness, good and evil, light and darkness, their full due. Had that been the case earlier in London with the Vic-Wells production that was more strictly based on Sergeyev and his notes? The current Kirov staging is built mostly from those notes as they are preserved at Harvard University plus designs in Russian archives. Some of it, though, is supposed to stem from ideas, atmospheres and details in other well-regarded stagings.

Transience is rule in ballet, and it is safe to assume that The Sleeping Beauty changed between 1890 and Sergeyev’s early 1900s notations. We don’t know the extent of those changes: substance or detail, intentional or happenstance, some by the choreographer himself and others without his consent. Petipa was in the habit of making new entrées and solos for new ballerinas. He might well have done so when his first Aurora, Brianza, returned home to Italy to dance at La Scala and the role in St. Petersburg was taken by Mathilda Kschessinska.

In regard to changes, the second production of The Sleeping Beauty is of some interest. According to the Tchaikovsky Foundation sources, no cuts are indicated in the conductor’s score for the 1896 La Scala version; the total music, including the entire Panorama, was played. Also, there are suggestions in the reviews of the time that consistency and unity were considerations for Giorgio Saracco who had staged the choreography “of Petipa.” Two changes of location are indicated. Aurora’s birthday (Act I), took place at a country picnic, not in a place garden—perhaps because that might be a more suitable location for peasants, who are identified in the libretto as including the knitting women and garland dancers. At La Scala, the last act, Aurora’s wedding, took place not on an esplanade of her father’s palace but in the Lilac Fairy’s domain in the Land of Legend—which justifies the participation of so many storybook characters. It also gave the Lilac Fairy the prominence she had in earlier scenes.

Saracco had been in St. Petersburg with Brianza and must have met Petipa. It is documented that they corresponded after Saracco returned to Milan, and letters were exchanged beyond the 1896 La Scala production. Petipa notes in a 1904 diary entry (Jan. 14) that he had received news of the younger man’s marriage. One can reasonably presume that their relations were cordial and that Petipa had given his consent to Saracco setting The Sleeping Beauty for La Scala, although there is no information on whether he was consulted on changes. Also in 1904 diary entries (Jan. 19, 20), Petipa on the one hand feels insulted when he’s not notified of rehearsals of his ballets at the Maryinsky and, on the other hand, thinks that now, at age 86, he should no longer have to rehearse standard repertory because that is the job of the second ballet master (Alexander Shyriaev). Despite his complaints about particular dancers (Karsavina, Grimaldi), Petipa doesn’t seem dis-pleased by the 1904 and 1905 performances of The Sleeping Beauty in St. Petersburg. There is no mention of choreographic or plot alterations, but only his 1903-1905 diary entries have been published.

The need to change the ballet in order to make the Lilac Fairy’s role more important throughout, which Saracco seems to have been the first to do, was felt everywhere eventually. The Sleeping Beauty evolved. It became a richer, truer, nobler realization of itself. Other changes were less commendable. The unnecessary Three Ivans divertissement that Bronislava Nijinska added to Diaghilev’s production and that De Valois rechoreographed for Sadler’s Wells; Puss-in-Boots feeling up the White Cat’s leg, which is vulgar in any age, and unimaginable in 1890, indeed does not happen in the restored Petipa of the current Kirov version.

However, the state of the Kirov’s dance tech-nique today did contribute to my disappointment. Superstretch and hyperflex, done so easily by the younger performers (on stage mostly by the women, but in class by both sexes) have made movement a little heavier and dulled its edge somewhat. While an unsegmented Soviet style still informs the dancing, can one tell that this is the Kirov and not the Bolshoi? Gone is the legendary Maryinsky exactitude, the classical control and a sublime fragility. Without these qualities there is less decorum as well as less rapture. Bodies tend to be just bodies. Perhaps the vivid words of Igor Stupnikov, writing about the new St. Petersburg generation in London’s The Dancing Times, led me to expect too much. In any case, I warmed more to the old-fashioned Aurora of Altynai Asylmuratova at the June 30th matinee than to Diana Vishneva’s June 29th Aurora, with her 12:30 extensions distorting the shapes of the tutus she wore, and with the sway of her raised foot as the price paid for so much flexibility.

The reason for doing an experiment is that one can’t be sure beforehand of the outcome. Ballet master Sergei Vikharev and his colleagues transformed the old notations and sketches into a production that—whether one liked it all, in part or not much at all—is eminently debatable. They must be thanked for undertaking this experiment in authenticity. It had to be done.

The Kirov’s Balanchine bill (2nd performance, July 9), revealed a Bizet Symphony in C that was very Paris Opera, a link to the gently brilliant ballets of Leo Staats. The role of the First Movement ballerina suited Irma Nioradze; she brought out the part’s sophistication. As the innocent Giselle on closing night (July 10), Nioradze was acceptable but not exceptional. In his The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, Rostislav Zakharov tried hard to make the choreo- graphy interesting as choreography. There are actually lots of steps in this ballet, but they work only when one forgets that they are steps. Uliana Lopatkina, sensational as the proud harem beauty and a worthy heir to Plisetskaya’s performance in the film version, made one see each step as temperament. Maya Dumchenko, as Maria, didn’t have the filmed Ulanova’s way of transforming movement into mood.

Seeing some Kirov classes and bits of coaching was most welcome. Albert Mirzoyan’s teaching seemed traditionally Soviet—thorough, often slow, on occasion fast. Ilya Kuznetsov’s plushness stood out in a Mirzoyan class. Yuri Fatayev’s teaching seemed lighter, Western, even a bit Balanchine, with varied pacing and more complex combinations. His was a smaller class. Saturday midday, July 10, Igor Zelensky, again a Kirov regular, and American visitor Ethan Stiefel stood next to each other as Fateyev instructed. Stiefel was the more incisive mover, Zelensky the more expansive. Kurgakpina, looking elderly now, danced timelessly as she demonstrated Giselle’s bourée to Nioradze; she became a full quiver of arrows as she urged Lopatkina on in Fountain.

The Met sold very well for the Kirov’s season, and audiences were indeed knowledgeable—conversations overheard in seats and lobbies matched those in the press room. One also heard quite a bit of Russian, and English spoken with Russian accents, even from young people. Is the post-Soviet immigration reversing the decline of balletomanes in America? Audiences in the nineteenth century, though, must have been temperamentally different than today’s. No one at La Scala seems to have complained that The Sleeping Beauty was danced in its entirety following an opera of medium length, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, with intermissions; that program might have lasted from 6:00 p.m. to past midnight. How differently did that public see?