Cast Changes Enliven ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Although the Royal Ballet “Sleeping Beauty” opened a week ago at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, some of the finest dancing in this production took place Saturday night and Sunday afternoon--the last two performances of the engagement.

Start with Nicola Tranah (both performances) as the season’s warmest, most gracious Lilac Fairy, notwithstanding fleeting technical lapses. Or Monica Mason (Saturday night), a memorable Carabosse in an earlier, better Royal staging of “Sleeping Beauty” (seen locally in 1978 and ‘79) and still magnificently forceful and complex in the role.

Saturday night boasted the familiar Royal partnership between Miyako Yoshida (Aurora) and former Bolshoi firebrand Irek Mukhamedov (Florimund). Occasionally brittle, the tiny Yoshida danced the Rose Adagio as a series of tests, looking to the audience for approval after passing them. However, her exemplary technical refinement and musicality gave her that approval without any need to ask. Mukhamedov partnered her lovingly in the Vision Scene and grand pas de deux, sometimes appearing heavy or labored in his solos. However, nobody dances with more heart, more intensity of belief, and it mattered enormously in this pallid, bloodless production.

Jonathan Cope also brought Romantic fervor to his portrayal of Florimund on Sunday, not always dancing with ideal control but making his character’s search for love the key energizing principle of the action. Opposite him, the long-limbed Muriel Valtat managed to look relaxed and natural in nearly every technical challenge, leaving an afterimage of great elegance and charm. Her only noteworthy mistake: a premature entrance in the Vision Scene.

Among many fine subsidiary performances, special excitement attended those by Stuart Cassidy and Christina McDermott in the Bluebird pas de deux on Sunday, with Hubert Essakow as Gold and Deborah Bull as the Fairy of Passion also exceptional. On Saturday night, the paragons included Gillian Revie as the Fairy of Purity, Mara Galeazzi in the Jewels quartet plus Neil Skidmore and Jane Burn as Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat.