Photo via Milwaukee Ballet - milwaukeeballet.org
Sleeping Beauty at the Milwaukee Ballet
Sleeping Beauty and the prince in a promotional image for the Milwaukee Ballet's 'Sleeping Beauty.'
“It’s every ballerina’s dream to do this role,” Marie Harrison-Collins tells me during a rehearsal break for Milwaukee Ballet’s new production of the classic Sleeping Beauty to the music of Tchaikovsky. In her first season as a leading artist and ninth with the company, she’ll dance the title role of Princess Aurora. “It’s not only the artistry,” she continues. “It’s technically very challenging. A marathon ballet, they call it.”
Milwaukee Ballet last presented Sleeping Beauty in 2008 with an entirely different cast. “We have a new company now, another generation,” says artistic director Michael Pink. “It’s a great thing for them to have pull up their socks and really focus hard on their technique. We have a lot of very, very talented dancers who will grow, and that’s the beauty of it. It will push them forward.”
As choreographer, Pink is editing, adjusting, revising, and occasionally replacing the original work of the late 19th century Russian master Marius Petipa, whose choreography has been the basis for generations of productions world-wide.
“Michael has also rechoreographed a lot of his 2008 production,” says Harrison-Collins, “He’s made it better. And not as long.”
Pink explains: “It’s following on from what we did in 2008. What you can do is distill it down to a more concise narrative. The Petipa ballet was four acts and ran three and half hours. This is two acts, each about fifty minutes long.”
Pink knows the Petipa version intimately. The legendary Russian superstar Rudolf Nureyev brought it to the English National Ballet in London where, Pink tells me, “We danced it for 10 years with Nureyev in the lead.” Nureyev had shortened it to three acts.
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Climactic Pas de Deux
Pink has left major passages unchanged, including the climactic Grand Pas de Deux between Aurora and her prince in the wedding finale, and the harrowing Rose Adagio in Act One between the princess and her suitors. “You’ll see how fine they are, how detailed and elegant,” he says. “But the rest is all me choreographing it for the company, to make up for the fact that we don’t have a hundred people on stage and so I have to keep them moving.”
In more traditional versions, he continues, “The girls dance their little toe shoes off, and the boys just look pretty, sort of standing around. Guys didn’t dance back then. They just lifted the girls up. I’m taking away this idea of having courtiers just wandering around. I’m making them all dance. I’ve enjoyed doing that because it gives the dancers more freedom. It’s a big dance show.”
Speaking of toe shoes, Harrison-Collins goes through several pairs per performance. The hardest-toed ones are required for the Rose Adag, as that Act One challenge is nicknamed.
“You’re standing en pointe on one leg. The other leg is all the way up behind you in arabesque, and you’re going around in circles, led by the guys’ hands. The first time you go around, you’re on that leg for like thirty-two counts, so you’re already puffed out, and there are four suitors I’m being introduced to. You can’t have any nerves going into it because you have to be so long on your leg that…” She doesn’t have words.
“It all comes down to strong technique,” she finishes. “We try to rehearse it a lot because when you go onstage you want to be 120% confident. Especially, your muscles need to be so strong.
From there we have another solo, and another, and then we die and the act ends,” she says. “Then the second act, we have this vision scene of fairies, and I have another solo and some smaller things, and then we have the ‘awakening pas’ which is full of Michael’s style, which I like doing. You feel like you can dance more. I mean, classical’s great but it’s very square and we’re not used to it. The awakening is all Michael’s choreography and it’s not square. You come up from sleeping a hundred years, and you just dance. The music’s amazing.”
Pink notes that the ‘awakening’ music is identical to the famous Adagio of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. In other productions, it’s followed by a second intermission, but Pink goes straight to the wedding celebrations and builds to the classical Grand Pas.
Traditionally, that’s followed by entertainments: dancing pussy cats; a Red Riding Hood with Wolf duet. Pink moved those to an opening scene, as entertainments for a child Aurora danced by a Milwaukee Ballet School student. All told, there are over 50 dancers in this show. The Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra will accompany with a highly recommended guest conductor from New York.
“This is a good show to bring families to,” Harrison-Collins concludes, “because it’s not as long as the typical Sleeping Beauty. I’m bringing my three-year-old daughter. She’ll love it.”
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Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on April 11 and 12, and 2 p.m. on April 12 and 13, at the Marcus Performing Arts Center. For tickets and further information, visit milwaukeeballet.org or contact the box office at (414) 902-2103
