Playbill April/May 1991 THE SLEEPING BEAUTY Peter Martins’s ballet about the triumph of good over evil premieres at the New York State Theater In May of 1987 the New York City Ballet celebrated Lincoln Kirstein’s 80th birth- day. That was when Peter Martins an- nounced that the New York City Ballet would mount a production of The Sleeping Beauty as a gift for Kirstein, after asking rhetorically what you give a man who has everything and doesn’t want anything anyway. But really, it started way before that, more than 60 years ago, when George Balanchine was a child in Russia, As a student, he appeared in Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty, in the first act “Gar- land Dance” and as a cupid in the third act. He was enchanted; it opened his eyes to the glorious possibilities of classical dance. Throughout his life Balanchine spoke about setting The Sleeping Beauty for the New York City Ballet and from time to time tinkered with parts of the ballet: a Wedding Scene pas de trois in 1927 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; a pas de deux in 1945 for Alexandra Dani- lova and Frederic Franklin, to the entr’acte music he later incorporated into the first act of The Nutcracker; excerpts for Amer- ican Ballet Theatre in 1949, including the “Bluebird Pas de Deux” and fairy varia- tions and Aurora’s solo, and the vision scene for the Eglevsky Ballet in 1977. All tiny, tantalizing glimpses of what he might have done with The Sleeping Beauty. During New York City Ballet’s 1981 Tschaikovsky Festival, Balanchine choreo- graphed his own version of the “Garland Dance,” which is included in the new production. “Balanchine talked to me a little about Sleeping Beauty,” Martins says, “though I didn’t speak to him about it—I just listened.” Martins’s first encounter with The Sleep- ing Beauty wasn’t quite as magical as Balanchine’s. “As a child I was a tree in a production in Denmark,” he says wryly. “Later, as an adult, I danced the Prince ‘in two others, one in London and one in Canada. As a dancer, the ballet never had a tremendous influence on me, but the music has always moved me—it always touched something in me.” And he firmly believed the fairy tale retained the power to move contemporary audiences. “The story will always be potent,” he empha- sizes, “because it’s about the triumph of good over evil.” Martins had few fixed ideas about The Sleeping Beauty, but he knew for certain he wanted to streamline the production, traditionally performed in three acts and a prologue with three intermissions. The story wasn’t a problem: A princess is cursed and falls into a deep sleep for 100 years; she’s awakened by the kiss of a brave prince, and everybody lives happily ever after. It could be told easily and efficiently. But the staging created diffi- culties. The prologue takes place at the christening of the baby Aurora and the first act at her 16th birthday party, A total change of scenery is required. The second act takes place 100 years later and begins in a faraway forest where Prince Désiré, who will wake Aurora with a kiss, is hunting. He must then travel back to ; the overgrown castle and break the spell. 5 And the third act is a joyous wedding cele- i bration, again, a complete and elaborate } change of scene. Martins hoped to cot dense the material into only two acts with"; asingle intermission. “My model, in many ways, was Balan- chine’s- A Midsummer Night's Dream,” he says. “He tells the story in the first act and then celebrates the wedding in the second,” Martins turned first to the music. “T went through the score from beginning by Maitland McDonaghi to end, trying to see how I could possibly cut out enough to make my concept of a two-act production into a reality. I spent a tremendous amount of time with Gordon Boelzner [New York City Ballet’s Music Director] and Richard Moredock [a’New York City Ballet Solo Pianist]. At first had the idea that I could take things and move them around, mix it up, but the more I worked with it, the more I realized that the score was an organic thing—one thing led into another. It’s fantastically structured; you couldn't tear it apart. “It was very difficult, but ultimately I cut at least half an hour. I’ve taken out a lot of symphonic sections that I didn’t think you can really choreograph to. I've also taken out a lot of repeats in places where I think you won't even notice them. No one is going to feel this is a condensed version of the score.” From the beginning David Mitchell was working on the design of the production. “The styles reflect the Loire Valley, from medieval times to the Renaissance to the days before the French Revolution,” Mitchell explains. But as befits a fairy tale, he adds, “the overall effect is timeless, not time specific.” When Martins unveiled his plan to do the ballet in two: acts, Mitchell’ was forced to rethink the entire practical structure of his designs and to devise imaginative ways to move quickly from sceite to scene, even when the story covered vast distances or enormous ex- panses of time. “We aimed to get people out of the theater by 10:40,” says Mitchell, and to make that possible he decided to use projections on a scrim to convey many of the temporal and spatial transitions, while the hard scenery changes take place behind the scrim. The projections are only part of it, though; the rest is accomplished with “some mechanical effects from Broadway and some good, old-fashioned stagecraft.” The ballet opens with a projection that “draws us down a forest road lined with dreamlike shadows,” says Mitchell. Mar- tins jokes that it’s the Avenue of the Pines, 38 which leads to New York City Ballet's summer home, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. “A chateau becomes visible at the end of the road,” Mitchell continues, “and finally we reach the facade. The interior of the chateau bleeds through, and the christening scene begins. This theme of moving in and out is repeated through- out the ballet.” The transition from the christening to Aurora’s 16th birthday party is swift: the projections return us to the chateau’s facade, then angle up to show the turrets. Mitchell describes a “Book of Hours effect”: The sun, the moon, and the stars move overhead, and 16 years go by in no time at all. The transition from Au- rora’s birthday party to the forest, where Prince Désiré is hunting a century later is equally swift. After brambles have grown to cover the chateau (the effect uses net- tihg covered with leaves, as well as hard pieces that come in from either side of the stage), front projections bring us back out along the forest path. The trees change color, again indicating the passage of sea- sons; a final aerial shot shows us the overgrown kingdom. It is replaced.by a projection of another forest, which leads us into the hunting scene. By now the forest has been created onstage. “I was worried about that transition,” Martins says. “I can’t think of another production in which 100 years pass in front of your eyes. You know, you go out for the intermission, have two drinks, and it’s much easier to imagine that 100 years have gone by. But when they go by in one minute, that’s something else. On the other hand, this is a fantasy . . . if 16 years can go by in one minute, why not 100? It’s in things like this that David’s contribution was so important. He created the illusion.” Martins chose to retain most of Petipa’s original choreography for the new pro- duction. “What I’ve kept is great, great choreography,” he says. “What I’ve taken away are the scenes and dance numbers that you wouldn’t consider great chore- ography—things Petipa did to fill time.” But this isn’t a straightforward restaging.EO ——KXKqxKiEaEEEEEEEEE "I’ve retained the essence of the choreog- raphy, but in many cases I’ve streamlined it,” Martins explains. “There are certain dances that are exactly as they were, at least as much as we can know exactly what they were more than 100 years ago. The “Rose Adagio” is the “Rose Adagio.” The “Grand Pas de Deux’’is the “Grand Pas de Deux.” In the third act fairy tale variations, “The Bluebird Pas de Deux” is the “Bluebird Pas de Deux.” I redid “Little Red Riding Hood.” I created a new dance for three jesters. I did a pas de quatre of precious stones as a little homage to Balanchine. The man is gold, and the women are emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. “The fairies in the prologue are now linked together without pauses between the variations, and I retained the basic structure of the steps, yet made some slight alterations. These are subtle changes, ‘but I think they'll be very apparent on the New York City Ballet dancers. I’ve‘also sped up some of the tempi, but that’s very much in line with Tschaikovsky’s own markings—the tempi disintegrated over the years, got slower and slower.” In keep- ing with Balanchine’s aesthetics Martins always placed the emphasis on movement, rather than tableaux. “The most difficult thing about this en- tire production was making it work phys- ically,” says Martins. “The easiest thing was putting the steps—whether Petipa’s or my own—on the dancers because that’s what I know. “New York City Ballet is the home of Tschaikovsky in the dance world, and The Sleeping Beauty may be his best score; certainly he considered it among his best. So we should perform it here. The pro- duction is a gift to Lincoln. But is it pre- sumptuous to say it’s also a gift to the company? It’s the company paying hom- age to its past, its foundation, its language ... Where it all came from.” o