BALLET REVIEW:
SLEEPING BEAUTY

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
12 MAR 2012
R: 4.5/5

Pictured: Heather Ogden

TORONTO - Think of it as a family heirloom of sorts — a balletic jewel from another time, worn by our homegrown Cinderella (to mix a metaphairytale or two) when she was invited to the Prince’s fancy dress ball and ended up with the whole world at her feet.

Because, finally, it is the memories of that ball, one suspects, as much as the enduring magic that legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev managed to pack into his homage to Marius Petipa and the glorious tradition of the Russian Imperial Ballet when he choreographed The National Ballet of Canada’s seemingly timeless production of The Sleeping Beauty that accounts for the work’s popularity with today’s audiences.

And that popularity shows no signs of diminishing, judging from the reaction of an opening night audience Saturday at the Four Seasons Centre, where The Sleeping Beauty’s lovely Princess Aurora (danced this time around by Heather Ogden) and her dashing Prince Florimund (Ogden’s real-life husband, Guillaume Côté) found true love and happiness once again, despite the best efforts of the evil fairy Carabosse (Rebekah Rimsay), and together danced off into the sunset on the next leg of their happily-ever-after world tour.

By now, that whole fairytale story has become a familiar one to audiences who have been enthralled with the work since its company première in 1972, when Veronica Tennant danced Aurora to Nureyev’s Prince. They were, of course, the first of many artists in many performances as The Sleeping Beauty was transformed into an international calling card for a company that found itself suddenly and quite happily in the centre of the international spotlight.

And even though it’s subsequently been tweaked — lovingly altered by artistic director Karen Kain, herself one of the most memorable Auroras in her own or any time — to address some of the more egregious excesses of Nicholas Georgiadis’ over-wrought and over-upholstered ’70s design, its power to captivate remains undiminished. Both in the simple story it tells with such precise grace and in the exquisite dance it uses to tell it, it remains a work that fairly shimmers with magic, despite the lingering fuss and feathers of Georgiadis’s dated designs. It is a work that has always provided a magnificent showcase for a company at the top of its form and the National Ballet remains at that peak, it seems.

While Côté may lack the hauteur of Nureyev in his prime (and, indeed, who doesn’t?), he’s still a formidable and dashing romantic leading man, particularly when he’s paired with the highly talented Ogden who tosses off demanding choreography like the Rose Adagio with an artistry that is thrilling. And while Rimsay’s Carabosse fairly crackles with evil, she’s well matched against the gliding goodness and grace of Lise-Marie Jourdain’s Lilac Fairy, as together they drive the plot forward.

In Nureyev’s vision, The Sleeping Beauty is as much about dance as it is about plot, so the fine dancing doesn’t stop with the leading lovers. Rex Harrington (as King Florestan) and Joanna Ivey (as his Queen) hold court over an impressive and precise corps that includes the likes of Stephanie Hutchinson, Tina Pereira, Chelsy Meiss and Tiffany Mosher, together representing a king’s ransom in jewels and precious metals, Naoya Ebe and Elena Lobsanova, scoring maximum points as the perennially popular Bluebird and Princess Florine respectively, and Shino Mori and Robert Stephan as a pair of scene-stealing Pussycats.

And finally, with David Briskin marshalling the impressive musicality of the NBOC Orchestra as they tear into Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s purpose-built score, it completes the kind of package that deserves not only the hallowed place it holds in the company’s 60-year history, but the affection it still commands in the heart of its audience as well.