Sleeping Beauty Ballet

For our last visit to the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Opera House we enjoyed a production of "Sleeping Beauty" with music by Tchaikovsky and dancing based on the original choreography by Petipas.  We had been at the opera house ticket office just after the tickets went on sale so we were able to get front row balcony seats for 8 of us to enjoy.  Georgia & Sherwood Ricks accompanied us with 2 other couples of the  temple missionaries.

The director of the St. Petersburg Ballet asked Tchaikovsky to compose music for a ballet in 1888. Wikipedia tells us, "Although Tchaikovsky may not have been very eager to compose a new ballet (remembering that the reception of his Swan Lake ballet music, staged eleven seasons earlier, had only been lukewarm), he set to work. The ballet, with Tchaikovsky's music (his Opus 66) and choreography by Marius Petipa, was premiered in the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre on 24 January 1890.  The ballet has a prologue and 3 acts. Besides being Tchaikovsky's first major success in ballet composition, it set a new standard for what is now called "Classical Ballet", and remained one of the all-time favourites in the whole of the ballet repertoire."


I only snapped a few shots with the camera without flash and thus needed to take the photos when dancers were posing, not moving. Everyone knows the the story of the wicked fairy's curse on the king and queen's baby daughter that the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and die.  Here is Carabosse (slightly moving) with her entourage and the other good fairies in the background.

   Here at her 16th birthday party Aurora is dancing with four would-be suitors.

After Princess Aurora pricks her finger, the good Lilac Fairy weakens the spell so that the princess is only sleeping along with all of the kingdom.

100 years pass and a prince comes into the area to hunt.  The Lilac Fairy shows him a vision of a beautiful girl dancing with nereids.  He even dances with her and then begs the fairy to take him to this mysterious princess. 

The prince kisses Aurora and everyone happily awakes. 

Act 3 is the wedding party of Aurora and the prince.  Of course there are wonderful dances between the prince and princess.

Included in the wedding party are fairy-tale characters who also dance duets (l to r): Princess Florine and Blue Bird, White Kitten and Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, and Cinderella with her Prince.  

The Lilac Fairy has overcome evil with goodness and blesses everyone in the finale.