Today I saw Sleeping Beauty at the Ferguson center. It was absolutely beautiful. One of our units explores dance as art. I am very attracted to dance, which is one of the reasons I am using it in my paper. The plot of the ballet Sleeping Beauty is a little different from what I remembered, or maybe it’s the Disney version that is wrong. Princess Aurora was cursed when she was a baby to die on her sixteenth birthday from the prick of a spindle. Instead of death, the young girl fell under a sleeping curse, thanks to one of the fairies; there were seven fairies listed for the cast in this ballet, I thought there were only three. The entire kingdom is placed under the sleeping curse to preserve it and its people until the spell could be broken. In Act II, Prince Charming, although I believe he is Prince Philip in the other version, is lured to the sleeping kingdom by the lilac fairy. The Prince comes in and wakes the sleeping princess with a kiss and the entire kingdom awakes with joy. The ballet ends with the wedding of the prince and princess and “a full series of celebratory divertissements [were] performed by the inhabitants of fairyland”. It was an interesting twist to see the wolf, little red riding hood, bluebird and his princess, and a pussycat and tomcat dancing at the wedding of the prince and princess. I noticed that the characters, such as the queen and king, lords and ladies, etc., who wore long garments did not participate in the large dances. They swayed and executed a few more simple steps; it was hard to tell what they were doing since their legs and feet were not visible under their long costumes. I think the costumes of the less mobile dancers were to set the tone and time of the production. The female dancers, the ones with a lot of dance in their roles, wore tutus that protruded out, like the ones you see in Swan Lake. The male dancers wore tights. I have to say that the tights on Prince Charming were a bit tighter than the other male dancers; there was zero left to the imagination. I also noticed that they main dancers were garnished with some sort of bling. The main fairies, there were seven main fairies and four possible fairies that danced with the other fairies, wore tiaras and their leotards and tutus had rhinestones. I can only imagine the ‘bling’ is to attract the audience to them. The costumes of the witch, or was she a fairy?. and her minions emphasized their evil natures. The minions hunched and remained grounded, not graceful like the other dancers. The witch or fairy was played by a male dancer, she remained hunkered over herself even while dancing and ‘running’. I wonder if they used a male dancer to emphasize the ugliness and sloppiness of the character; note that I’m not saying all men are like that especially dancers. I also noticed how the music really brought together a scene. The upbeat music emphasized the joy in the dancers, menacing music emphasized the wickedness of the witch, the low music emphasized sorrow, etc.
One of the things I
really didn’t like about the ballet was without the program I would not have
understood what was going on. I know the
general story line of Sleeping Beauty,
but again the Disney version. These dancers were amazing. Overall, I really enjoyed the ballet. The dancers were beautiful and once I
understood the story line of the ballet I saw it play out in the dance.
No comments:
Post a Comment