The Sleeping Beauty is perhaps the Ugly Duckling of Tchaikovsky’s three ballets. It was the second in the trilogy, completed in 1889, but has neither the dramatic thrust of Swan Lake nor the calorific sugar-coated charm of The Nutcracker in terms of popular appeal.
If the audience response was not very enthusiastic, it's because Ratmansky's Sleeping Beauty four years after its premiere still comes across as more of a museum piece than a living, breathing ballet. This is a Beauty that never really wakes up.
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