Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty' on PBS Great Performances

I watched Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty' which I had recorded from PBS Great Performances over several evenings last week.  It completes Bourne's reconceptions of the great trilogy of Tschaikovsky ballets -- 'The Nutcracker', 'Swan Lake', and 'Sleeping Beauty'.  The so-called 'male' 'Swan Lake' became an enormous hit in London, on Broadway and around the globe.  We saw 'The Nutcracker' in Los Angeles over ten years ago.  It's set in a Dickensian orphanage. 

In rethinking 'The Sleeping Beauty', Bourne has tackled the thorny problem of the love story.  How realistic is it for Princess Aurora to awaken from a 100-year sleep by the kiss of a prince she has never met, then to immediately fall in love with him and marry him?  

Bourne's solution is that the fairies from the Prologue are also vampires -- vampire fairies.  

The six Vampire-Fairies in the Prologue/Christening.  Liam Mower as Count Lilac is third from the left.
Photo by Simon Annand

This clever and trendy (think the 'Twilight' series of novels and films and the HBO series 'True Blood') combination allows him to make the Act I 'Rose Adagio' into a love duet for Aurora and her true love, the gamekeeper.  

Hannah Vassallo as Aurora and Dominic North as Leo, the gamekeeper, after she is pricked by the thorn
Photo from BBC

When Aurora is pricked by the rose thorn and falls into that century of slumber, the Lilac-Vampire-Fairy bites the gamekeeper -- making him an immortal gamekeeper-vampire-fairy.

Meanwhile, Carabosse, the evil fairy is only a fairy -- not a vampire --  and thus sickens and dies after making her curse in the Prologue.  She's replaced by one of her sons, Caradoc,  who is distraught at his mother's mistreatment by the royals in the Prologue.  He proceeds to enact the curse on Aurora at her 21st birthday celebration.  Later, Caradoc deceives Leo, the gamekeeper-vampire-fairy, into bestowing the awakening kiss on Aurora.  Then Caradoc abducts her for a blood wedding to himself.  

Hannah Vassallo as Aurora arrives for the 'blood wedding' to Caradoc
Photo by Simon Annand

Caradoc is foiled by the Lilac-Vampire-Fairy who kills him with the sacrificial dagger he is about to use on Aurora.

Count Lilac (the Lilac Fairy-Vampire) stabs Caradoc with the ritual knife to end the blood wedding
Photo by Simon Annand

Aurora is spared to wed the gamekeeper and the Apotheosis shows them happily married with their own vampire-fairy-child.

Wedding of Aurora (Hannah Vassallo) and Leo, the gamekeeper-vampire-fairy (Dominic North)Photo by Simon Annand

Throughout the ballet Bourne's choreography ranges from inspired to insipid.  Bourne often demonstrates that he has studied the Petipa original and uses it as the reference point for his own choreographic deconstructions.  His variations for the six fairy-vampires in the Prologue is one clever example.  He uses Petipa's dance motifs for each of the fairies, but then lets his choreographic imagination take hold to expand and alter them to suit his fairy-vampires -- half of whom are female and half male.

In Act I, Bourne's choreography to the garland dance often undermined the waltz impulse of the celebratory music in order to make points about the Edwardian setting.  While his choreography to the Rose adagio music moved the love story forward, it really rode over many of the natural climaxes that are so beautifully effective in the traditional Petipa choreography.  

The vision scene was really more of a collection of dance moments than a sustained exploration of longing and desire. 

Bourne discarded much of the Act III music for the wedding guests (bluebirds, precious jewels, red riding hood) and used the Puss'n'boots music for a dance for the corps with cat-claw motifs.  Bourne used Tschaikovsky's music for the wedding pas de deux for the action sequences of the interrupted blood wedding.

The Prologue/Christening is set in 1890, the year that Petipa's production opened at the Maryinsky in Saint Petersburg.  Act I is set in 1911 on Aurora's 21st birthday celebrated with an Edwardian tea dance/lawn tennis party in front of the castle.  The Act II vision scene is set in a birch forest where most of the characters are in Edwardian corsets and undergarments.  Act III begins in 2011, the year before Bourne's production was introduced.  It starts with the awakening in the birch forest and then moves to a blood-red underground club where all of the characters are dressed in red and black for the blood wedding.  It ends in 2012 with the birth of the vampire-fairy-child to Aurora and Leo.

Aurora as a baby and Leo and Aurora's vampire-fairy-child are played by puppets manipulated by puppeteers using sticks.  They add a whimsical note to the Christening and the Apotheosis.

Having seen all three of Bourne's Tschaikovsky reinventions I think they all display some novelty in their conception, but fail to follow through with consistent levels of choreographic invention.  'Sleeping Beauty' falls back on the admittedly clever vampire-fairy concept but dance imagination often flags.

Class Visit at SAB

A good friend, Jean McC, was visiting from Wisconsin last week.  She and her good friend and former NYC neighbor, Anne McC, are Jock Soto groupies.  So the three McC's took in one of Jock's classes at SAB last Wednesday.  It was a two-hour Adagio (partnering) Class for the Intermediate Men and C1 Girls.

School of American Ballet, Adagio Class with C1 Girls and Intermediate Men,
photo by Rosalie O'Connor for School of American Ballet

Many of the C1 Girls have already gone through a growth spurt and emerged as tall (especially en pointe), lithe young women, usually between 13 and 16 years old.  Some of the Intermediate Men, sometimes as young as 12, are already quite tall and strong, but many are still growing and gaining strength.  In general, these girls are taller than these boys. 

In previous weeks, Jock had apparently taught this class the full wedding pas de deux from the final act of 'Sleeping Beauty'.  Needless to say, this is a very difficult piece of choreography and a challenge for the most accomplished professional dancers in the world.  Jock had modified the choreography only slightly to account for the technical level of these students -- a slight modification of the fish dives being the most obvious change.

Tyler Angle and Katherine Morgan in the Wedding Pas de Deux  from the final Act of 'The Sleeping Beauty',
as staged by Peter Martins (after Petipa), photo by Paul Kolnik for NYC Ballet
(in August, 2012, Katherine took a leave from NYC Ballet to deal with serious health issues)

There were more than twice as many healthy C1 girls as healthy Intermediate Men.  (There were several boys and one girl on the sidelines with injuries or illness -- students are required to attend classes unless they are bed-ridden or have something contagious).  So all of the men danced the pdd at least twice during the class while each girl danced just once.

Two couples danced at a time, except for the final run through when there were three couples remaining.  As with other Adagio classes I have watched, the first couples to dance receive more of Jock's attention than those who dance later.  In essence, though, all of the students waiting to dance are observing and learning from all of Jock's corrections and suggestions.  They are often practicing the corrections at the back of the studio as they await their turn to dance.  Jock delivers his suggestions and corrections with a light, often funny touch.  He has no problem assuming either the male or female role in order to demonstrate the point he is making. (Yvonne Borree is scheduled to join Jock for this class, but was unavailable on the day of the visit.)

In the early rounds, it is obvious that the couples have sought each other out and are comfortable dancing together -- a kind of balletic version of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Sometimes that's because they are a couple, or at least good friends, outside of the studio.  Hopefully, it's also because they complement each other dancing together.  In latter rounds, Jock intervenes a bit to make the best pairings among the remaining students.

Dancing the complete pdd, including the male and female variations and the coda, is a real effort for these still-growing young students.  Centers of gravity change from one partner to another and the young men struggle to adapt to different height and centering.  Some of the girls are less willing to trust their partners which can look more like wrestling than ballet at some points.  But at the end of each run-through these students are glowing with satisfaction and basking in Jock's praise.

Jock Soto is an extraordinary teacher.  He had a long and illustrious performing career, forming notable partnerships with several ballerinas including Heather Watts and Wendy Whelan, and becoming a muse for numerous choreographers including Christopher Wheeldon. 

Jock Soto & Wendy Whelan in Balanchine's 'Symphony in Three Movements',
photo by Paul Kolnik for NYC Ballet

Long before he retired from the stage in 2005, Jock began teaching at SAB.  When Stanley Williams (the revered SAB teacher who was recruited by Balanchine from the Royal Danish Ballet in 1964) became sick in the mid-90's and then died in 1997, several principals from New York City Ballet (including Soto, Peter Boal and Nikolai Hubbe) who had studied with Stanley agreed to teach Stanley's classes at SAB to fill the enormous gaps in the schedule.

Not only was Jock an outstanding partner during his performing career, but he knows how to convey the concepts of partnering to his SAB students, both male and female. Under his guidance a whole roster of exemplary male partners have emerged from the School into New York City Ballet and many other companies. The Angle brothers, Robert Fairchild, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Chase Finlay, Amar Ramasar, Craig Hall and Zachary Catazaro are among the exemplary partners at City Ballet who have emerged under Jock's tutelage. Seth Orza, a principal at Pacific Northwest Ballet, also comes readily to mind.  I hesitate to guess how many of today's ballerinas have learned to be partnered in Jock's adagio classes.