TCHAIKOVSKY: Sleeping Beauty (Bolshoi Ballet, 1989) (NTSC)

Nina Semizorova, Aleksei Fadeyechev, Nina Speranskaya, Yuri Vetrov
The Bolshoi Ballet, The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra,
Aleksandr Kopilov

Choreography by Marius Petipa
Staged by Yuri Grigorovich

Sound Format: PCM Stereo
Picture Format: 4:3
Region Code: 0 worldwide
Menu Languages: D, F, GB, SP
Running Time: 145 mins
DVD 9/ NTSC

Cat No.: 101 113

Unfortunately not available in Japan and Korea

More midprice ballet from Arthaus, this time Tchaikovsky's magical fairy tale performed by the incomparable Bolshoi.

Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky's brightest, most festive and joyous work, is also the chief work and masterpiece of St Petersburg choreographer Marius Petipa. The Soviet ballet historian, Yuri Slonimsky, put the significance of the féerie in a nutshell, characterising it as the "encyclopaedia of classical dance". Both the dramatic build-up, which contrives to constantly develop of the dance events in a single, huge span of tension, from the prologue, through four huge adagios and right up to the final apotheosis, and the inexhaustible wealth of inventiveness and diversity and the perfection of the individual dance and step sequences, are seen as exemplary of the St. Petersburg ballet style of the late 19th century.

Grigorovich's Sleeping Beauty is an example of a creative conflict and metamorphosis as reconstruction: "We have breathed new life into the principles of dancing, symphonic dramatisation and harked back to Petipa at the same time. […] Pompous retrospectives were replaced by performances where the human world of the protagonists was the main motivating force of the story line, the focus upon which the choreographer's thoughts and emotions could concentrate."