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Sleeping Beauty - a metaphor for our time

3/5/2022

Sometimes, things happen when they’re supposed to. State Street Ballet’s new treatment of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty - a major addition to the company’s repertoire - was set to receive its premiere in Santa Barbara in early 2020. Fate intervened with a real-time Sleeping Beauty experience.

The re-scheduled premiere of Sleeping Beauty last weekend precipitated pleasurable goosebumps of anticipation weeks before opening night. A full house Saturday night (March 5), including young parents and their kids, jammed the Granada Theatre with energy and expectation. It’s been a long time.

Professionals all, State Street Ballet projected particularly confident ensemble cohesion as they danced for a live audience again after the long, planet-wide nap of the past couple years. The Opera San Luis Obispo Grand Orchestra, under the baton of Brian Asher Alhadeff, made use of a cleverly reduced orchestration of the original score with delightful style and polished finesse. The SSB production crew - sets, lighting, costumes, special effects - managed stage craft magic with aplomb. Everybody, audience included, enjoyed a wonderful awakening.

Sleeping Beauty (1890) is the second of Tchaikovsky’s three ballet masterpieces, sandwiched between Swan Lake (1876) and the most famous of the three, Nutcracker (1892). Like Washington Irving’s novel, Rip Van Winkle (1819), Sleeping Beauty contemplates lost time. The brothers Grimm tweaked an earlier version of the story to add a popular homily about the constant struggle between good and evil.

Working around and through Marius Petipa’s original 1890 choreography, SSB’s Rehearsal Director Marina Fliagina, Associate Executive Director Cecily MacDougall, and Professional Track and Rehearsal Director Megan Philipp collectively added their own subtle choreographic homage and design twists, fashioning the story into four scenes - Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. So much gorgeous music, so little time in this new version of an hour and a half or so, meant trimming the score by half from its original length, and tapering the action accordingly. Still, this new production was sensible and tight.

Guest artist Aaron Smyth (Prince Florimund) and SSB’s Deise Mendonça (Princess Aurora) paired beautifully in principal roles as star-crossed representatives of love-conquers-all romanticism. Arianna Hartanov, who joined SSB in 2018, was a stunningly powerful Carabosse, ironically, both Fairy of Wisdom and representative of evil in the world of Grimm - something about original sin, which Hartanov appeared to relish. Saturday’s Lilac Fairy, Saori Yamashita, created a yang role of goodness and bright truth, to counter Carabosse’s evil yin.

The “travelogue” conceit used in Nutcracker to introduce a host of exotic countries and dance forms, originated in Sleeping Beauty, where a similar mechanism of showy virtuoso dance vignettes features a bevy of fairies and other Grimm characters. Puss and Boots (Tanner Blee), White Cat (Emma Matthews), Little Red Riding Hood (Amara Galloway) and her Wolf (Oscar Bravo Ly), the Fairy of the Crystal Fountain (Elizaveta Domracheva), Wheat Flower Fairy (Emma Matthews), Fairy of the Woodland Glade (Eliana Swanberg), Singing Canary Fairy (Amara Galloway), the Fairy of the Golden Vine (Marika Kobayashi).

Princess Florine (Marika Kobayashi), and Bluebird (Harold Mendez) also paraded their stuff before the King (Nathaniel Tyson) and Queen (Emily McKinney), Dukes and Duchesses, courtiers and squires, huntsmen and suitors, with colorful flair and flourish. Ensemble dances, solos, duos, and combinations were introduced with trademark dandyism by audience favorite, Sergei Domrachev as Catalabutte, Master of Ceremonies.

One of many delightful memories from the evening was Christina McCarthy’s enormous dragon puppet design. The evil Carabosse’s huge winged sidekick was scary and impressive, with a dollop of silly fun.

Daniel Kepl/Performing Arts Review