The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty presents a challenge to Scottish Ballet. Ashley Page has spent five years repositioning the company away from tutus and turn-out to something more experimental and unique.

The Christmas production, however, is a tradition that is determined by the season and the expectations of young balletomanes. Page has talked about his desire to connect this box-office success to the company’s more distinctive programmes: his Sleeping Beauty is a singular spectacle that merges a playful post-modernism and rigorous ballet technique.

Despite hints in the programme that this Beauty has a dark past – earlier versions of the story involve adultery and murders – Tchaikovsky’s lavish score prevents any excessive brutality. The influence of Wagner that Page detects in the orchestration has inspired him to tidy up the storytelling, but it is not powerful enough to create a Screaming Beauty.

Instead, there are light touches of kitsch humour and camp – Beauty’s sleep is induced by a large, phallic cactus rather than a needle, Carabosse’s daughters are bald-headed aliens and the courtly first act is delivered with a wry smile. The choreography is modern, but not jarring, and the principals revel in the chance to exhibit their technique. Soon Ja Lee’s graceful strength is clear in her lyrical solos, Jarkko Lehmus brings a stolid machismo to the King, and if the corps de ballet are slightly loose in places, the male dancers are, as always, precise and fluid.

Claire Robertson, as Princess Aurora, is serious rather than sensual: like last year’s Cinderella, the heroine comes across as humble until Act Three, when the solos allow her to reveal her finesse. She seems rather immature during her dance with the suitors
– appropriately so, and making her final awakening all the more passionate.

Perhaps most importantly, the staging and costumes are exquisite. Page works very closely with his designer Antony McDonald, and this is rewarded with an astonishing originality and attention to detail. The different historical periods are recreated effectively, Carabosse looks like the third member of the Dresden Dolls, fairies boast tutus that are so vibrant that they could allow the show to be performed as a series of tableaux, and the inevitable periods of posturing demanded by story ballets are made delightful by the sheer elegance of the fabrics.

The Sleeping Beauty doesn’t really unite Page’s contemporary preoccupations with the Christmas spectacular: at best, he injects an ironic distance and a sense of fun. It does point to the other work, however, in the quality of movement and witty self-awareness: it also stands on its own terms as a sumptuous visual treat, a musical extravaganza and a charming introduction to a company on the rise.