Nobody Dances The Sleeping Beauty better than the Birmingham Royal Ballet

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Birmingham Royal Ballet The Sleeping Beauty The Lowry 7 March 2024 18:39

Every March the Birmingham Royal Ballet visits The Lowry to perform one of its full-length works.  This year the company brought Sir Peter Wright's production of The Sleeping Beauty.  I had been looking forward to it very much.  I have seen many performances of that ballet by different companies over the years but none has danced it better than the Birmingham Royal Ballet.   It is not surprising that Sir Peter has been commissioned to create versions of that work for the Dutch National Ballet and the Hungarian Ballet.

I attended the evening performance on 7 March 2024.   As I had expected, the dancing, drama, music, sets and costumes were outstanding but I do have one criticism.   A performance of The Sleeping Beauty normally lasts three and a half hours with intervals between each of the Acts and between the Prologue and Act I.  Those intervals are there for a purpose.   They allow the audience to reflect on the dancing that they have just seen and, unless they already know the ballet backwards, prepare for the next Act by consulting the synopsis.  Intervals also provide opportunities to look out for friends and acquaintances, take a comfort break, grab some refreshments or just stretch pairs of legs.  The show that I attended was telescoped into 2 hours and 50 minutes with just 2 breaks of 15 minutes each.  Acts I and II, which are supposed to span 100 years in the story, were juxtaposed with just a 3-minute pause between them.  Those intervals were just not long enough to absorb and appreciate fully the cascade of colour, sound and movement.       

Happily, there was still plenty to enjoy.  The Sleeping Beauty is a contest between good and evil represented by the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse.  I know that Aurora and Florimund are supposed to be the leads and that their roles are always performed by principals but I have always found them two-dimensional.  The success of the ballet hinges on the performance of those two fairies.  If they fall flat then the ballet is nothing more than an endless string of divertissements,

By far the more interesting fairy is Carabosse as she arrives on a black conveyance surrounded by petty monsters on a peel of thunder following a flash of lightning.  In some productions, Carabosse is danced by a man but I sense an extra frisson when the role is danced by a woman.   The best Carabosse that I have ever seen was the great Dutch ballerina Igone de Jongh but Daria Stanciulescu was pretty good too. I felt her rage as she peevishly plucked the last remaining hair from Catalabutte's pate, 

But evil does not win completely because Carabosse's curse is mitigated by the Lilac Fairy.  She was danced by Eilis Small.  She has a demanding role because she is the only character that appears in every scene of the show.  She guides Florimund through the thicket to Aurora's bed, projecting goodness and calm, banishing Carabosse in a puff of smoke on the way. 

Though their characters may not be as interesting as Carabosse's or Lilac's,  Aurora and Florimund have the best choreography.   The grand pas de deux at their wedding requires considerable virtuosity.  Momoko Hirata and Max Maslen performed those lead roles with flair.   Perhaps the most demanding part of Aurora's role is the rose adagio in Act I where she has to pass gracefully between four suitors.   The sequence requires considerable poise and concentration but Hirata almost made it look easy.

The only parts of the choreography of The Sleeping Beauty that I have ever tried to learn are the fairy variations in the Prologue.  Each is very short but none is easy.  Isabella Howard, Rasanna Ely, Rachele Pizzillo, Reina Fuchigami, Sofia Liñares and Yu Kurihara danced the fairies of beauty, honour, modesty, song, temperament and joy respectively.  I learnt a lot from them.  They were a joy to watch.

Liñares and Pizzillo joined Enrique Bejarano Vidal and Shuailun Wu in the pas de quatre for Aurora's wedding.  I loved Gus Payne's cheeky Puss-in-Boots and Isabella Howard's coquettish White Cat. I must congratulate Riku Itu and Yaoqian Shang on their Bluebird pas de deux.  Itu started his career at Northern Ballet and it was good to see him again.  Tessa Hogge and Callum Findlay-White were an amusing Little Red Riding Hood and Woolf.

This production has been in the company's repertoire for nearly 40 years but it seems as fresh as ever. Philip Prowse's sets and costumes continue to awe.  Touches like the scattering of the stage with gold confetti continue to delight.  So, too, does the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. On 7 March it was conducted by  Paul Murphy.

The Sleeping Beauty itself occupies a special place in the history of British ballet as it was the first work to be performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House after the Second World War.  That show took place on 20 Feb 1946.  However, according to the Manchester Guardian review of that performance of 21 Feb 1946, it was not the first time that the company performed The Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden.  The company danced The Sleeping Beauty there at a special performance for the state visit of the President of France in March 1939.   

As this review will appear early on Easter Day, I wish all my readers who observe the festival a Happy Easter and everyone in the UK a happy bank holiday weekend.