Pennsylvania Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty'

Peti par excellence

LEWIS WHITTINGTON

Only months apart, Pennsylvania Ballet delivered the demands and enchantment of two huge story ballets, Giselle and Sleeping Beauty, both displaying the breadth (and vulnerabilities) of the company’s classical range. Sleeping Beauty— consuming more than two and a half hours, and performed every five or six years— remains one of PB’s most consistent and satisfying repertory classics. Even during this transitional year— with many new personnel and several dancers departing— artistic director Roy Kaiser remained solidly behind his dancers in this demanding ballet..

Though the June 3 Sunday matinee performance contained pacing problems (as well as a complete fallout by one dancer), with drawn-out scenes under Tchaikovsky’s most lugubrious ballet score, by Thursday the flow was completely smoothed out. Both performances I caught contained a gallery of great performances, displaying not only great character work but also pyrotechnical achievement among the leads and a glittering display of technical drama and ensemble flair for the women’s corps. The male configurations continued to show brittleness amid occasional flashes of what could be, such as their circular leap sequence in the floral hoop scene, which was executed with bounding unity.

Choreographic master Marius Petipa’s imperial classical canon is fleshed out and expanded by former PB dancer Janek Schergen— and, really, this his ballet within a ballet, with rich transitional phrasing, gestural acting and storybook danse de caractère that bring sharper focus to Petipa’s dazzling choreography. A great Versailles palace design, complete with garden battlements, look perfect in the Academy of Music.

Ochoa and Hench, perfect together

Sunday’s leads— Martha Chamberlain as Princess Aurora and Alexander Iziliaev as Prince Desiré— suffered at first from static and over-studied phrasing, but grew more confident by demanding pas de deux of Act III. Chamberlain finally fused with the role with more expressive acting, and Iziliaev ignited his quietly attendant, unfussy Prince.

Thursday performance, starring Arantxa Ochoa and Zachary Hench, was more complete; in fact, this pair is first-rate in every respect. Ochoa brought artistry to every technical and theatrical aspect of the role. Hench, flowing and explosive in the cabriole variations, always centered turns. The two of them repeated the poisson dives with such precision that the audience couldn’t hold its applause before they were finished. Equaling this level was Francis Veyette and Valerie Amiss’s cool fire chemistry in the Bluebird duet, Veyette sustaining the muscled airiness required in the role.

The challenging Rose Adagio

Amiss, retiring this year in top form, was no less than sparkling as the Lilac Fairy. Gabriella Yudenich, alternating in the Lilac role, demonstrated both technical reach and brilliant stage presence. Yudenich inhabited this part with character invention, and like Ochoa, flashed ballerina cabochon every moment. She invests herself in every phrase, turning some of the Tchaikovsky’s forgettable interludes into completely narrative text.

Before the quad in ice-skating, there was the perfectly executed Rose Adagio, with Aurora static in high arabesque held in turn by four cavaliers. Between each suitor, her arms must dance up and freeze arced over the head (haut fifth position). It’s an iconic porcelain ballerina image even elite ballerinas find almost impossible to perform without a measure of correction. It’s so distracting that sometimes I wish it would just be adjusted. Both Chamberlain and Ochoa belied the tension in their arms, but Ochoa less so— and she held to character, actually the most important part of that passage.