Moscow Dancers Uphold Elegant Traditions in The Sleeping Beauty
March 16, 2006
The crowning achievement of choreographer Marius Petipa‚s career was The Sleeping Beauty, a work set to a Tchaikovsky score and often cited as the finest of all classical ballets. Moscow's Russian National Ballet, a company of more than 50 dancers led by former Bolshoi Ballet principal dancer Sergei Radchenko, performs the familiar fairy tale in three acts at 8 p.m. Friday, March 31, in Penn State's Eisenhower Auditorium.
The National Ballet, an example of the elegance and artistry that are the hallmarks of Russian dance, fills its ranks with dancers from the finest companies and academies in eastern Europe.
Tickets for the Center for the Performing Arts presentation are $34 for an adult, $18 for a University Park student and $24 for a person 18 and younger. For tickets and information, visit www.cpa.psu.edu or phone (814) 863-0255. Outside the local calling area, dial 1-800-ARTS-TIX. Tickets are also available at Eisenhower Auditorium, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; Penn State Tickets Downtown, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday; HUB-Robeson Center Information Desk, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays; and Bryce Jordan Center, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
The Sleeping Beauty is based on Charles Perrault‚s fairy tale. Princess Aurora is condemned at her christening by an evil fairy to prick her finger and die on her 16th birthday, but she is saved by the Lilac Fairy, who declares the princess will merely sleep until awakened by the kiss of a prince. It's a tale replete with a king and queen, fairies good and evil, a beautiful princess and a dream prince, magical stage effects and courtly splendor.
The ballet is a masterful demonstration of Petipa's challenging style–steel pointe work, sharply accented spinning turns, soaring leaps, high extensions, brilliant battery (beats in the air) and daring lifts. Petipa choreographed the work in strict association with Tchaikovsky's music. Themes are developed and resumed throughout the ballet, yet each act is a unity unto itself.
The themes–a girl's coming of age and the triumph of good over evil–are developed dramatically and musically. Each of the three acts features an adagio for the princess. The first celebrates her girlhood, the second her falling in love and the third her marriage.
Graduates of the superb choreographic schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg founded the Russian National Ballet in Moscow in the late 1980s. Known originally as the Soviet National Ballet, the company took shape at a time when many of the dancers and choreographers of the former Soviet Union's great ballet institutions were asserting new creative freedom by starting their own companies.
Kish Bank sponsors the performance. Radio station 95.3 3WZ and TV stations FOX 8 and ABC 23 are the media sponsors. Free audio description, which is especially helpful to patrons with sight loss, is available for this performance at no extra charge to ticket holders. A child-oriented Artistic Viewpoints–sponsored by the Center for the Performing Arts Community Advisory Council and free to ticket holders–takes place one hour before the ballet and includes activities and snacks.
Contact: Laura Sullivan, 814-863-6379