Photo by Nathaniel Davauer
Milwaukee Ballet Company - Sleeping Beauty
Milwaukee Ballet Company performs 'Sleeping Beauty' (2025)
Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa co-created the ballet Sleeping Beauty for the Imperial Ballet in St. Peterburg, Russia in 1890. It was their first collaboration, and it stands today as one of the greatest of all classical ballets. Classical ballet companies the world over present their takes on the original, but Petipa’s choreography remains the basis, as I understand it. It’s a splendid example of classical style and its demands.
The story is based on a thousand-year-old fairytale of good over evil, love over rage-wrought destruction. What it’s really about onstage is the music and dancing. It means to delight, astonish, uplift, and help us put aside worries for a couple of hours. Forget it’s regal politics; it’s an old-school ballet that holds up remarkably well. At least it did in Milwaukee Ballet’s splendid, beautifully edited production last weekend.
When well-played. Tchaikovsky’s music, of course, is forever divine. It’s like a big hug. I was raised on the vinyl recording, and I still remember the Disney lyrics to its most famous waltz.
Music Serves the Dancers
The big challenge that conductors and orchestras face in a ballet performance of the score is to make sure that every musical dynamic serves the dancers perfectly. Guest conductor Tara Simoncic and the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra could not have done a better job at that. Simoncic was the first woman to conduct for American Ballet Theatre in New York. She’s currently Louisville Ballet’s Music Director and Resident Conductor for New York’s Flexible Orchestra. Her list of national and international credits is enviable.
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This production’s scenery and costumes are well-travelled. We’d seen the spectacular clothes here in 2008 when Milwaukee Ballet last presented Sleeping Beauty. This year, Artistic Director Michael Pink also corralled some big, interesting, colorfully painted backdrops from somewhere in Arkansas. What made all of it truly magical was David Grill’s inspired lighting. I’m sure Tchaikovsky would have loved the rich colors. We’re lucky that Milwaukee Ballet has become another home for Grill.
And the dancing! Given the technical challenges, it’s easy to imagine the kind of production that’s given classical ballet a bad name, a kind of soulless grandiosity with dancing that looks rote or show-off. The musical structure encourages the latter, with many climaxes followed by breaks for applause.
Inside the Characters
What Pink’s dancers do better than most, in my experience, is let us know what’s going on inside them as the characters they’re playing and the human beings that they are. There’s not a lot of opportunity for that in the big group numbers where the dancers have to focus on perfect uniformity, itself no mean feat. But given the opportunity, these dancers give us the characters in body and soul.
There’s a kind of applause Milwaukee Ballet audiences give in response. It’s rich with gratitude. It’s personal, human to human. You hear it from the many young folks in the audience who cheer with intensity, and from us older folks who clap extra hard.
Marie Harrison-Collins danced the title role of Princess Aurora on opening night. I’m sure the whole audience noticed her trembling as she balanced on pointe with her leg in arabesque for an impossibly long time, while being turned full circle in that position by suitor after suitor as each fellow took her hand. The trembling became an expression of the character. After all, this was Princess Aurora’s arrival at adulthood at age sixteen, meeting four potential husbands while the whole court watches. It’s natural that this smart, sensitive youngster would shake. I thank Marie for showing us how difficult that choreography is while also presenting a stirring portrait of a vulnerable young woman.
Randy Crespo danced Prince Dèsirè, who wakes Aurora with a kiss from her hundred years’ sleep. He, too, brought vulnerability to his dancing. A man in love, he let us see how important it was to lift her perfectly in partnering her, and why he’d want release in joyful leaps and spins. He danced as her equal.
Human Tornado
No matter how big or busy the crowd onstage might be, Marize Fumero, through her skill and charisma, always took focus as the Lilac Fairy, the story’s force for good. Likewise, Garrett Glassman’s Carabosse, the story’s evil witch, was a powerful presence, a human tornado with a storm of wild henchmen surrounding him.
Barry Molina as the neighborhood Blue Bird bounding high could credibly inspire a desire to fly in Alana Griffith’s Princess Florine. After all, these two play Peter Pan and Wendy in Pink’s ballet of that tale.
High praise to the always excellent Lizzie Tripp-Molina, who set aside her classical ballet skills to play the important acting role as Queen of this dream. And heartfelt cheers for Emily Wanek, the talented Milwaukee Ballet School student who brilliantly danced and acted the eight-year-old Princess Aurora on opening night.
