Petipa's beauty awakes

Robert Greskovic on the Kirov Ballet's newly researched Sleeping Beauty

Earlier in this decade of surprising occurrences within Russia, the tricolour Russian flag began flying atop Kremlin spires where the Soviet Union's scarlet and gold, hammer and sickle banner had previously flown for what seemed like an eternity. Now, perhaps even more surprisingly, at least to those who watch world culture as eagerly as world politics, Russia's august Kirov Ballet has put on stage a production of The Sleeping Beauty that aims to expunge all the 'improvements' made by Soviet ballet masters and to reclaim its 1890 origins by way of records currently housed in the United States. The resulting, four-hour spectacle had its premiere on 30 April in St Petersburg before opening the troupe's recent two-week season at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

The restaging was based on research of Marius Petipa's original choreography, and has the following credit: `Sergei Vikharev based on the Stepanov notations in the Sergeyev Collection of Harvard University.'

The `ballet-f6erie' in a prologue and three acts, plus apotheosis, has a score by Tchaikovsky to a libretto based on the fairytales of Charles Perrault. Vikharev's staging came about at the behest of Makhar Vaziev, the company's current director; it displaces a succession of previous Soviet productions. All of the earlier Kirov stagings, despite their sundry emendations and 'modernisations', came with confident claims to being essentially Petipa's work.

Now comes Vaziev's Kirov, calling a halt to the former Soviet ballet's bluff notion that it was a world unto itself, utterly selfsufficient and in no way beholden to sources outside its inner sanctums. The allBalanchine quadruple bill, which Vaziev chose as the climax to the Kirov's New York stint, proved unprecedented and surprising in its way, but the re-thought Beauty remained in a category all its own regarding the unexpected. The records which Vikharev studied were those maintained by Nicholas Sergeyev, the former imperial ballet master who slipped the documents out of Soviet Russia in 1918 before making his name in Western Europe, primarily in England, where he recreated a sizeable repertory of Petipa ballets. (England's Mona Inglesby, to whom Sergeyev left his notebooks, sold the collection to Boston's Harvard University in 1969.)

Now, precisely 50 years after Ninette de Valois's Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet wowed New York with a production of The Sleeping Beauty mounted according to Sergeyev's notes, the Kirov arrived with its own rendering from the same sources. I didn't see those 1949 performances, but I have seen that production and its 'descendants' since the late 1960s, and, without taking away from the wonders of the Sergeyev staging that de Valois and her longtime, genius right hand Frederick Ashton enriched with their own savvy touches, it is still fair to say that the Kirov's newly researched Sleeping Beauty will become the flagship of all Petipa Beautys hence.

To be sure, the Kirov's use of Americanheld archives was only part of the big undertaking. A crucial part of the project mined sources long held in Petersburg itself, namely those documenting the ballet's many sets and many more costumes.

The original scenic designers numbered five, and their work has been scrupulously recaptured now by Andrei Voitenko. The original costume scheme was devised by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Intendant of the Imperial Theatres, who also helped work out the ballet's libretto; Elena Zaitseva judiciously oversaw the 'translation' of Vsevolozhsky's 19th-century fairytale aesthetic for 20thcentury ballet physiques.

Unfortunately, not every aspect of the Kirov's lovingly detailed work could be shown in New York. The ballet's legendary panorama, the artfully unspooled length of scenery engineered and painted to depict the journey of the prince to the castle of the sleeping princess, could not readily be transferred from the Maryinsky to the Met, and had to be left in Russia. Similarly, though the large number of personnel on stage, including child performers, outdid every other production of Beauty previously shown in the States, the fullness of forces was curtailed a bit on tour, particularly with regard to children. But, even in the face of such `nips and tucks', a notable grandeur remained.

The Prologue, presenting Princess Aurora's Christening, unfolds in outline as we've come to know it, only much more lushly, with more elaborate pageantry. The resolution of the wondrously choreographed pas de six in which the good fairies present individual gifts, climaxed by individual solo dances, to the Princess, is eye-filling, first from geometrically swelling forces and finally in elaborate tableau. The last act, a parade and dance showcase for numerous fairytale characters, celebrates the nuptials of the awakened Princess and the purehearted prince who broke the spell that held her captive. It all ends with a glorious apotheosis that spreads out like a sunrise refracted on the foam in wave after wave of an incoming tide.

Still, as any balletgoer will tell you, without a remarkable ballerina, a woman fortified by far more than her company's hopeful regard, to illuminate a role as central and commanding as that of the Princess Aurora, Beauty is no more than a pretty show. Led by the extraordinarily talented Svetlana Zakharova and Diana Vishneva, who danced Aurora on the first and second nights, respectively, the Kirov's Beauty lived precisely up to its name. Zakharova has an exquisitely fine-boned physique, which she can work to look as sorrowing as a weeping willow or as ecstatic as a day-lily saluting the sun. Vishneva is a goddess of an athlete, projecting a radiance that is both beguiling and potent.

Other Kirov Beauty dancers also made much of their roles. Notably the sly and powerful Igor Zelensky who was a golden Prince Desire. A shimmering Daria Pavlenko made much of the Lilac Fairy and her blissful dancing and beneficent miming.

Anton Korsakov, a mere slip of an 18-yearold, innocently worked wonders with the legend-bound role of the Blue Bird.

As of now, the weakness in the grand tapestry of this 19th-century ballet spectacle is the pantomime. Though the new staging allows for all the mime that Petipa and Tchaikovsky included, something previous Soviet versions excised as embarrassingly old-fashioned, the artists given the tasks of performing the mime passages haven't found the old values that made this art as musically vivid as that of academic dancing. Islom Baimuradov was especially inconsequential as the vengeful fairy, Carabosse.

And even in the case of those artists who were memorable, Vladimir Ponomarev as the King, for instance, their expressiveness remained more post-silent-movie acting than formal gesture given its full musical measure.

The bill of Balanchine ballets, which brought back to Petersburg the works of its great expatriate, amounted to little more than a worthy start for these dancers working to acquaint themselves with Balanchine's advanced ways for making ballet a fully-fledged 20th-century endeavour. But, especially being offered in New York City, Balanchine's adopted home-town, their efforts were marvellously moving. At this rate, the Kirov's dancers will one day dance Balanchine as their very own heritage, and that will be different from the way Balanchine's own New York City Ballet dancers performed for him. Balanchine reworked Petipa to suit his new vision; the Kirov is now primed to refract Balanchine through its Petipa prism and remarry the two aesthetics on their side of the world.

Robert Greskovic writes about dance for the Wall Street Journal; his book Ballet: A Complete Guide (30) will be published by Robert Hale on 30 November.

Copyright Spectator Aug 14, 1999
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