Dance and Music Reviews : S.F. Ballet Mounts a Centennial ‘Sleeping Beauty’

After 100 years, it’s about time someone got serious about “The Sleeping Beauty.”

San Francisco Ballet does exactly that, in a new $750,000 production that manages to be both novel and profound.

To heighten the sense of Aurora sleeping for a century--a crucial plot point that most stagings blur--company director Helgi Tomasson and his designer, Jens-Jacob Worsaae, set the first half of the ballet in Russia before that country’s enforced Westernization. Except for the usual fairy-tutus, this court looks spectacularly Byzantine. (Think of “Boris Godunov” without the beards.)

The last act, however, takes place in a Russia transformed by 18th-Century European fashion--with everyone wearing powdered wigs. (Enter Aurora the Great.) The change is not only appropriately startling, it acknowledges the unique blend of Russian spirit and French refinement that shaped the art of both Tchaikovsky and Petipa.

Unfortunately, the production suffers occasional cop-outs and lapses, ranging from such minor inconsistencies as Aurora wearing a tutu in the Rose Adagio to such serious problems as a bungled staging of the Lilac Fairy’s spell. (After the court falls asleep, she dances at the front of the stage while a Maryinsky-blue act-curtain descends behind her to hide a set change. Very unmagical.)

The Panorama and Awakening sequences prove equally disappointing; in the latter, Tomasson even disfigures the score by inserting quiet music from another part of the ballet after the climactic kiss. There are also lots of cuts and new, pseudo-Petipa choreography, including a drastically revised Vision Scene. Perhaps some of this needless tinkering will be reconsidered.

Flawed as it is, the production has such deep intelligence and sheer splendor that it easily outclasses the empty-headed versions currently danced by American Ballet Theatre, the Kirov and the Bolshoi. What other “Sleeping Beauty” dramatizes how long it takes for goodness to vanquish evil in this world, for love to finally triumph?

Moreover, this centennial staging confirms the status of San Francisco Ballet as a major classical company. Two casts danced at the War Memorial Opera House on Saturday, each distinguished by an exquisite Lilac Fairy: Wendy Van Dyck at the matinee, Muriel Maffre in the evening. The alternating Fairies of Darkness (a.k.a. Carabosse) also proved equally powerful, with Jim Sohm marginally more feline in the afternoon and Anita Paciotti a smidgen more forceful that night.

Recently back from an injury, Ludmila Lopukhova danced a technically cautious Aurora at the matinee, very Kirov in its style and highly promising. Her partner: the aristocratic, accomplished Gregory Osborne. In the evening, Anthony Randazzo could not match Osborne’s finesse, but danced the Prince with such deep Romantic longing that he transformed the role from the inside.

As Randazzo’s Aurora, Evelyn Cisneros danced with great vivacity at a very grand scale, taking risks with some of the most treacherous passages (the Rose Adagio promenades in attitude, for example) but always observing the niceties of classical style.

You want Bluebirds? Just try to improve on the high-flying precision of Andre Reyes and the fleet, dainty brilliance of Elizabeth Loscavio at the evening performance. Many subordinate roles were also cast with such exciting principals-in-the-making as Antonio Castilla, Jennifer Karius, Max Fuqua and Christopher Stowell.

Notwithstanding occasional problems with orchestral balance and tone, Denis de Coteau conducted a polished account of Tchaikovsky’s 1890 masterwork--twice in the same day.