Waking Up the Sleeping Beauty : Three ballerinas explain the challenges of New York City Ballet’s ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ Yes, the classicism of the 19th Century is still treasured, but the style is definitely 20th Century

Choreographer George Balanchine revolutionized ballet in this century, changing the way ballets were made and the ways dancers looked. He shaped the New York City Ballet into the primary vehicle for his innovations, directing the company from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1983 and creating for it hundreds of works.

The company also became the training ground for producing Balanchine ballerinas--a special kind of thoroughbred. Suzanne Farrell was the archetype. She looked and danced entirely differently from her contemporaries in the Kirov Ballet or the Royal Ballet.

She was taller, bigger, swifter. She attacked phases differently. She pushed the limits and spurred Balanchine’s imagination to ever - greater heights.

Balanchine’s innovations enthralled many people in the classical ballet world, but they also appalled many. Yet undeniably he stamped 20th Century all over the art form.

Now comes the company for a one-stop West Coast visit at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, from Thursday to Oct. 24, and what is its calling card? “The Sleeping Beauty,” universally acknowledged as the touchstone of 19th-Century Russian classicism, the sumptuous heart, soul and summit of the art of Marius Petipa. (A final weekend of mixed repertory restores the 20th-Century balance, with such Balanchine works as “Agon,” “Serenade” and “Symphony in C.”)

To be sure, this “Sleeping Beauty” is a controversial production, created in 1991 by the company’s ballet master in chief, Peter Martins. Martins has streamlined the work, editing its four acts to two and reducing its overall length to about 2 1/2 hours. But he has retained the traditional choreography credited to Petipa for the title role--Aurora--and incorporated Balanchine’s 1981 choreography for the Garland Waltz.

(As a child, Balanchine had danced in the Garland Waltz on the stage of the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, home of the Imperial Ballet School and the site of the premiere of “Sleeping Beauty” in 1890. He regarded his work as continuing--developing--the Petipa tradition.)

What kinds of challenges do 20th-Century ballerinas feel when they face dancing the title role? Trained as they are in the Balanchine and Jerome Robbins repertory--the staple of the company--can they be comfortable in the Petipa choreography? Do they approach the role of Aurora as a series of technical challenges or do they try to create a character they can relate to? Or both?

Three of the four women dancing Aurora in Orange County--native Californians Darci Kistler and Kyra Nichols and New Jersey native Nichol Hlinka--talked recently about their encounters with the 19th-Century classic. (Margaret Tracey, also scheduled to dance Aurora, was injured last month and won’t be on the tour. Her replacement had not been announced by press time.)

For Kistler, 29, dancing Aurora is a dream come true.

“ ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the first ballet I ever saw,” she said. “It’s a story I grew up with as a fairy tale.” The first time she saw the work, in 1967, she and her mother drove to Los Angeles from Riverside, where Kistler was born, to see Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev dancing the principal roles with the Royal Ballet at the Shrine Auditorium.

“Like every little girl, I loved ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Swan Lake.’ That’s what I had seen. Then I saw New York City Ballet, which is what I fell in love with,” she said.

Kistler joined City Ballet in 1980 after studying at the School of American Ballet and rose to the rank of principal within two years. Martins picked her to dance the first Aurora when his production of “Sleeping Beauty” premiered in April, 1991. Eight months later the two were married.

Kistler found that joining City Ballet “did not mean I was giving up the classics; I’m still dancing classically,” she said. “And it (is) much more of a diverse repertory with the New York City Ballet. And I figured it would make me a better dancer. I could always dance the classics. They weren’t going anywhere.”

In fact, despite Balanchine’s emphasis on abstract, plotless ballets, Kistler stressed that “even in New York City Ballet, we do dance roles that have character in them. That’s not so foreign to all of us. What is foreign is that this is a three-act ballet done in two acts. It’s a lot of dancing for us. The difficulties are stamina and proportion.”

Even with the difficulties, Kistler regards Martins’ production of “Sleeping Beauty” as special because “it’s a classical ballet from a neoclassical company . . . which is the two (approaches) meeting.

“We’re all based on classical style,” she said. “Our steps, our language is all classical ballet. So I like to say this is a marriage, a happy meeting of the two, which is why it’s different. So it’s not going to look like a normal production. It’s faster, faster paced. But none of it is distorted.”

But she worries that expectations derived from seeing other, traditional productions will prejudice audiences. She asks people to keep an open mind when they see Martins’ version.

“Hopefully, they will look at this production on its face value,” she said, “and be interested in seeing it , instead of thinking about the Royal or some other production. But it’s so enjoyable, you can’t help but like it. That’s what’s so important.”

Changing her own expectations is what Nichols, 35, experienced too.

“At first we felt we needed to change our styles, because it was very unfamiliar ground,” she said. “A classic like that has to be danced a certain way. Then I started to realize that everything in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is what Balanchine has choreographed already. We’ve done all those steps. So I thought, ‘Why not just dance as we already dance?’ We do so many of the steps in Balanchine ballets.”

Nichols, a native of Berkeley, joined the company in 1974, but not because she was interested in story ballets.

“My mother (Sally Streets) used to be in City Ballet in the ‘50s,” Nichols said. “She trained me. I just loved the movement and the beauty of holding a scarf in my hand or a flower. I didn’t feel like I needed to tell a story. That’s probably why I gravitated more to New York City Ballet and Balanchine. That was the kind of dancing I felt more comfortable doing.”

Nichols finds “Sleeping Beauty” a stretch because “it is so pure.”

“The challenge is to maintain the purity,” she said. “This is wonderful to dance once or twice a year, like we do ‘Nutcracker.’ But it’s hard to do just one ballet like this, because you use the same muscles over and over again. A steady diet of it?” She groaned.

Nichols said she needs to “focus in” when she does Aurora: “It’s a lot of pressure. You’re the center of the story. But it’s amazing how you just get sucked into the character. And it’s different for everybody. I’m not a small tiny girl. I can’t play it cutesy like a small little girl would. I have to approach it very simply, so I come off looking young, like this is happening to me. I try to think of the role as a young girl having her 16th birthday.”

Her favorite part of the ballet is the Vision Scene because “the prince is just imagining you.”

“You’re not really there,” she said. “In the first part, you’re a young girl, then you show the woman-sylph-nymph side in the Vision Scene. The last scene is the regal wedding, which is straightforward.”

To be sure, there are some technical challenges, particularly from the first entrance through the Rose Adagio, Nichols said.

Those famous balances in the Rose Adagio are “extremely hard,” she said, because “you’re not onstage long enough to calm down--because you need to be fairly relaxed to do balances.”

“If you could do it in the second act, it would be a little easier because you’d be tired,” she said. “Plus, we’re not used to going out and doing things like that.” But “once past that, you can really enjoy yourself.”

Nichol Hlinka, 35, acknowledged having mixed feelings about “Sleeping Beauty.”

“I joined New York City Ballet because I was very drawn to its repertory, and I had no desire to do ‘Giselle’ or ‘Swan Lake,’ ” she said. “But this version is right in keeping with New York City Ballet traditions and basically what Balanchine came to. So I very much enjoy it, much as I enjoy ‘Coppelia,’ which Balanchine did, which is also a full-length ballet.”

Hlinka finds story ballets challenging but “in a different way than Mr. B’s work . . . (primarily) in the development of a character.”

“From act to act, changing your character, interacting with people, that was what I always find difficult for such a long period of time,” she said. “It takes a great amount of energy to keep an audience captivated for three acts. There has to be a lot of development in your character. It’s different than dancing ‘Donizetti Variations’ or ‘Le Baiser de la fee.’

“Mr. B’s works are usually--for most of them that I’ve done--20-minute ballets or pas de deux. (In “Sleeping Beauty”) I find that the length of time onstage and then to carry the character from act to act, all in one performance, to me that’s the greatest challenge. Stamina-wise, it’s not easy. It’s difficult.”

Hlinka enrolled at the School of American Ballet, the company school, when she was 13 and joined City Ballet when she was 16.

“I was one of the smallest dancers in the company then,” she recalled. “I don’t know if I still am. But I’m very proud of the fact that, in a company known for very tall dancers, Mr. B would think enough of my talent that he would want me in the New York City Ballet.

“He was very specific. He had in his mind that we would be trained by Russian ballerinas. He realized that from the past you learned a great deal; you just didn’t shove that aside. My teachers were (Alexandra) Danilova and (Felia) Dubrovska. I learned the Petipa style from ballerinas who were with Diaghilev. That’s pretty terrific.

“He made sure we learned that before he brought us into the company, where he trained us, as he put it, ‘even beyond that.’ Those are his words, not mine. I’m glad that we do productions still from the 19th Century. . . . I’m proud that we do that, that we’re holding onto something from the past but taking it forward. I think it’s very important.”*