And so to the second part of Peter Schaufuss’ Tchaikovsky Trilogy of the three great Russian classical ballets. In Sleeping Beauty, re-titled A Sensual Dream, the complicated weaving of the choreographer’s vision in connecting all three ballets together begins to make a little more sense – at least to those who had viewed his Swan Lake. Again another glorious traditional classical masterpiece has been re-worked, but happily there is more dancing here than in Swan Lake, giving the company greater opportunity to show off technical abilities. However, the ballet scenario skips around the original and is still far too complicated to just sit back and enjoy. The little grey cells had to be switched on throughout the evening to hopefully work out who’s who and what relationship they are to each other – not always successfully, I admit.
The set and some of the costumes remain the same as in Swan Lake, though happily relieved a little from the dreary grey with touches of red both in the Queen’s dress and the lighting on the mirrored backdrop. The music is again recorded and very uneven in tempi and volume – at times ear-piercingly loud. Tchaikovsky would have been horrified.
The ballet begins with the King and Queen (Von Rothbart and Queen Mother lookalikes) making love, and just minutes later, she goes into labour on the bed. Her legs, swathed in her red Lycra skirt part and from under the bed, her pink, ‘naked’ offspring shoots out (most effectively), to be carried onto the bed by her proud father. Four beaming fairies come and pay the baby homage, and give her a pair of sparkling shoes as their gift. Enter Carabosse, daughter of the King and step-sister to the baby Aurora. Danced by the wiry, petite Yoko Takahashi, now looking like Cat Woman in her sleek black outfit and knotty stiff pigtail, she stalks her prey and pounces, convincingly showing her anger and hatred for all and sundry with speedy stabbing steps, finger-pointing and whizzing turns. When the baby has been taught how to walk – like a Coppelia doll – she exchanges the fairies’ shoes for her own magical ones.
Time passes quickly and soon the baby is sweet sixteen and ready to meet the four prospective princes – Spanish, Arab, Chinese and Russian, as were the prospective bride-princesses in Swan Lake. (All eight dancers are to meet in Nutcracker). In a touch of comedy, Aurora finds that her shoes glue her to the ground and so the pseudo Rose Adagio is done mostly with her on the spot. The role of the princess was danced by Megumi Oki (last seen as the Swan Girl), another tiny-framed dancer who has a spritely leap and fast spinning turns.