FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.


The beauty of ballet classics' kiss
Good vs. evil and old vs. new duke it out in the dance community
By Nikki Sheppy

Sleeping Beauty
Royal Winnipeg Ballet Thursday, February 20 and Saturday 22
Jubilee Auditorium

It's the stuff of childhood imagination. A battle between the forces of good and evil where rescue results from that most significant of gestures - the kiss.

Sleeping Beauty is among the best-loved ballets of all time, pairing up as it does the famous duo responsible for that other masterwork, Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky originally composed the music in 1889 and had Marius Petipa choreograph the dance the following year.

In the hands of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, it's a lavish piece - the sets, costumes and dancing all strive to evoke the splendor of the royal court.

According to André Brink, artistic director for the RWB, among its chief attractions are its purity, expressiveness and the great precision of its vocabulary.

Himself an alumnus of the company, Brink is adamant about the pleasures of classical ballet in a modern world. "It's just such a beautiful language," he says. "There is such a richness of movement and of styles. It's all-encompassing."

But what of Sleeping Beauty itself? The legendary Princess Aurora is cursed at her christening and 16 years later cast into a century-long sleep, only to be reawakened by the puckered lips of a sensationally handsome Prince Florimund.

In an age when cynicism is fashionable and romantic love strangles in the grip of an increasingly robust divorce rate, it seems only logical to question the relevance of this fairy tale to modern audiences. But here, Brink is sure-footed.

"Look at Star Wars," he says. "What is it about, ultimately? Good against evil. It's a fairy tale all the way through, but they just made $30 million selling it a couple of weekends ago. The relevance is still there.

"For a while, though, ballet was given a bit of a bad rap," he admits. "People said it was too old-fashioned; it just wasn't relevant to today's society. They wanted to see the more in-your-face modern work. And I think it's quite the contrary. If you give them good ballet, they will come."

While this may be true, it's not obvious in a city replete with jazz and modern dance organizations, a city in which even the ballet company favors new choreography over ballet classics.

"People say that Calgary is a modern (dance) town. Well, first of all I don't agree with that. I would say that in many ways - certainly in the sales we've done in the past - it has shown itself to be a town that very much appreciates classical dance. And that's what we bring, without being at all apologetic about it."

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