The Sleeping Beauty
English National Ballet, Coliseum
Forgive me the lame pun, but although The Sleeping Beauty is performed worldwide, there are not that many great Beauties around. One exception is, arguably, the one staged under Kenneth MacMillan’s supervision, first seen in Berlin in the Sixties, then reworked for American Ballet Theatre in 1986 and now performed impeccably by English National Ballet. Unlike some 20th-century stagings of the celebrated classic, MacMillan’s relies on a profound respect for performance tradition and, at the same time, a choreographically and dramaturgically vibrant reading of the old text. As such, it remains one of the clearest, most immediate and most enjoyable versions of the 1890 work, and the one to see if you want to appreciate in full what the fuss surrounding the Imperial Russian ballet tradition is about.
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