Bossov Ballet Theatre - Vaganova Ballet Technique

Bossov’s The Sleeping Beauty at the Opera House

by Michael Duncan Wyly
Executive Director, Bossov Ballet Theatre

The Sleeping Beauty by Bossov Ballet Theatre plays at The Waterville Opera House Friday and Saturday July 30^th and 31^st at 7:00 P.M. each night. To ballet fans, the Tchaikovsky masterpiece defines classical ballet, composed in 1890 and first performed in the presence of Czar Alexander III.

American’s think of Disney’s timeless animated film, first seen in 1959, when they hear “Sleeping Beauty”. Few realize that it was the Russian ballet set to the music of Russia’s foremost composer, story and costumes by Russian librettist and designer, Ivan Vsevolojsky, who inspired Disney, not the French fairy tale by the same name by Charles Perrault which has quite a different story line and ending. It was Vsevolojsky who re-wrote it to make it “ballet friendly”. The production soon became the trademark of Russia’s Imperial Ballet and the great Anna Pavlova in 1908 danced Lilac Fairy, successfully upstaging the Princess Aurora danced by the now less-remembered Mathilde Kshesinskaya. Disney was in the audience for the Russian-made ballet’s 1949 premier in New York, performed this time by the British Sadler’s Wells company with Moira Shearer as Lilac Fairy and Margot Fonteyn as Aurora. He set to work right away on what would be a ten-year project through to completion. The animated characters wear Vsevolojsky-inspired costumes and perform to Tchaikovsky’s music.

No other ballet boasts so many colorful and complex characters. Six different good fairies and one evil one. Each bestows her trademark gift on the baby Aurora at christening: Tenderness, Dancing and Happiness, Generosity, Mischievousness, Bravery, and Wisdom. Disney halved the number of good fairies, consolidating the gifts into three composite ones. After all, in the pre-computer 1950’s an animation required hundreds of hand-made drawings of every character and even the great Disney could only draw so many!

Great Lilac Fairies (Giver of the gift of Wisdom) such as Pavlova and Shearer are still remembered, as are the whole retinue of fairies because in The Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora is molded by, rather than casting her influence over, the other characters, as do Cinderella and Snow White, for instance. Aurora’s challenge is to appear progressively more mature from scene to scene as she grows from eager young debutante to marriageable young lady. But in so many regards it is her many patrons who make the story so full of interesting characters. In the final scene at the wedding we meet guests from Perrault’s other famous tales, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, Puss ‘n Boots, Tom Thumb, The Bluebird and its companion Enchanted Princess.

In the Bossov performance The Prince will be danced by Guest Artist Stephen Lawrence, courtesy of St. Louis Ballet, St. Louis, Missouri, where Mr. Lawrence will begin his third consecutive season next fall as a Soloist. He is a home-grown star, a 2004 graduate of Lawrence High School and Bossov-trained from his teen years. We are ecstatic to have him on stage once again in his home state!

Tickets may be purchased by calling the Box Office, Waterville Opera House, 207-873-7000.