Milwaukee Ballet danced to a nearly packed house at the Marcus Performing Arts Center on Saturday afternoon for Sleeping Beauty, the second-to-last production of the company’s love-themed season. The classic ballet is based on a French fairy tale of the same name about a princess, Aurora, cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a century, awakened by a kiss from Prince Désiré to live happily ever after.
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Milwaukee Ballet hasn’t performed Sleeping Beauty since 2008, and save resident lighting designer David Grill’s accentuation of Alabama Ballet’s borrowed sets and costumes, it almost felt like no time has passed since. Perhaps it is Sleeping Beauty’s proximity to the lush, wildly imaginative worlds created earlier this season in Casanova, a fresh Nutcracker whose new-car smell has not yet worn off, or even February’s inspired MKE MIX at the Baumgartner Center, but this 1889 stalwart feels flat by comparison. They’re victims of their own success, it seems.
That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. Sleeping Beauty is a rite of passage for ballet dancers and companies – a barometer by which to compare them to everyone else. Its thin, utilitarian plot is little more than a vehicle for exhibition. The ballet’s dozen or so variations are especially a showcase for Milwaukee’s ballerinas, not to mention the orchestra, who sounded better than ever this weekend. It’s a very pretty production. And there’s something to be said for being given permission to escape into a fairy world of princes and princesses.
Sleeping Beauty is the least-performed of Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s three collaborations (Nutcracker and Swan Lake are the other two), but it is arguably their best. Artistic director Michael Pink sticks surprisingly close to the original, at least concerning the variations, employing choreography believed to be as near as possible to Petipa’s and passed down from dancer to dancer for 135 years. Thankfully, Pink takes liberties in other places, trimming the fat to get the runtime down significantly (to just under two-and-a-half hours) and creating fresh, vibrant group dances in his signature painterly style.
Blink, and the spritely variations at baby Aurora’s christening party are over. But Kristen Marshall, Lahna Vanderbush, Nanaho Nakajima and Alana Griffith manage these peppery solos beautifully. Marize Fumero’s approach to the Lilac Fairy is more stoic and staider, almost foreshadowing her job guarding Aurora during her centurylong slumber.
The royal court’s in-house entertainment is yet another excuse for remarkable dancing, with fairy-tale-within-a-fairy-tale duets for Daniela Maarraoui and Marko Micov as Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, and an adorable Puss in Boots (Ben Zusi) spatting with White Cat Jacqueline Sugianto. Raven Loan and Flynn Stelfox are a formidable pair as Blue Bird and Princess Florine in the ballet’s second act, fluttering to Tchaikovsky’s avian-esque flute. Stelfox is off the ground more than he is on it – quite masterfully navigating that variation’s signature pass of brisé volés.
Guest artist Jennifer Hackbarth (an alum of Milwaukee Ballet’s academy, now at Sarasota Ballet) danced a delightful Aurora Saturday afternoon, sharing the role with Marie Harrison-Collins. Hackbarth perfectly captures the dramatic range this role offers: a teenage beauty courted by every bachelor in her nonspecific European fairyland; a woozy, wobbly solo after pricking her finger, cursed by a terrific Garrett Glassman as the evil witch Carabosse; and the more grown-up Aurora, awakened by her prince (Parker Brasser-Vos, who shared the role with Randy Crespo). The two lovebirds dance together for about five minutes, then get married – as one does.
Those plot points are marked by some of Sleeping Beauty’s most iconic moments. The Rose Adagio in the ballet’s first act is a thrillingly hard variation for Aurora and four suitors (Brasser-Vos, Josiah Cook, Eric Figueredo and Marko Micov), twice requiring the ballerina to remain balanced on one leg as each partner queues up to offer his hand, one by one. Then there’s the wedding pas de deux for Aurora and her prince, a wonderfully schmaltzy display of dominance over classical technique. In both instances, that difficulty was evident Saturday afternoon, with Hackbarth fighting for nearly every moment. That struggle can be exciting to watch – and Hackbarth doesn’t flinch, feigning ease and leaning on her partner to get their job done.
