The Sleeping Beauty
I tend not to like narrative ballets (especially full-length narratives) because I find there's not enough dancing. Sure, there's usually a nice pas de deux, but usually it's just a lot of graceful gesturing. So I was pleasantly surprised that Peter Martins 's take on The Sleeping Beauty includes quite a bit of dancing, much more than I expected. I guess that when the main plot points of a story revolve around parties and dreamy visions, there's plenty of opportunities for divertissements and fantasy dances. The libretto (by Marius Petipa and A. Vsevolozhsky )for this version hews pretty closely to what most people know (likely from the Disney animated film). We begin at the palace where the king ( Andrew Scordato ) and queen ( Gretchen Smith ) are celebrating the arrival of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The Catalabutte ( Sean Suozzi ) and his lackey ( Giovanni Villalobos ) provide a welcome amount of humor. Soon, various fairies are bestowing blessings up...