Ballet - Sleeping Beauty

Performance: Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty
Date: 1st December 2015
Location: Sadlers Wells, Angel, Islington, London.
Seat: Second Circle, Row O, Seat 16
Rating: 4/5

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty is my third ballet experience. Unfortunately I felt I went in with a bit of a prejudiced opinion after seeing Cinderella at the Coliseum in July, and feeling like nothing could possibly match this. Whilst Sleeping Beauty was incredible and beautiful, there is no denying that, I felt it lacked something.
The music for Sleeping Beauty was composed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1889, and first performed the following year. Along with Swan Lake and The Nutcracker it is among Tchaikovsky's longest lasting and most famous repertoire. Tchaikovsky is quite possibly my favourite composer, therefore I loved the music, it was incredible. It is hard to understand why Tchaikovsky hated his music so much. However Sleeping Beauty was not played live, rather it was pre-recorded which I felt took away from the magic slightly.
Bourne, like Wheeldon with his contemporary take on the ballet, changed the story slightly. Instead of a spindle which pricks Aurora and sends her into her sleep, it is a rose. Furthermore, Bourne used the different acts to be set in different periods of time, for example the last act was set in the modern day as opposed to the first act which was set in the 1800's. The first three acts, I felt worked really well, fitting in with the classical tropes of fairy stories and ballets with beautiful glittering costumes and props. However, the modern act, Aurora's marriage, I felt took the magic away from the ballet and the fairy story, with the characters dressed in jeans and hoodies. This to me felt like a betrayal of the enchanting and mystical nature of the fairy tale, and I feel one of the beauties of watching the ballet is seeing the intricate and exquisite costumes that are presented, which compliment the beauty of the dancing. Moreover, unfortunately I found the storyline a little muddled and hard to follow. The ballet was marketed as a Gothic Romance, and this came into play with the fairies. However, it was hard to decipher whether the fairies were good or evil, and what role they played within the story. The man that falls in love with Aurora also gets some sort of vampirific transition at the end of act II which was just a bit strange. I understood the practicality of it, it meant that the man she loved could then live 100 years to eventually wake Aurora up, but it just didn't fit in well with the storyline, and I felt there could have been better ways around this plotline.
Bourne, must however, be commended on the fantastic use of puppetry in the first and final acts. The young, baby Aurora, is represented through puppetry and it was just wonderful. The movements of the puppet looked so realistic it took me a while to establish it was in fact a puppet and not a child. It was incredibly clever and was the subject of quite a lot of mischievous humour, much like a child which me and the audience appreciated immensely. 
Additionally the staging exceeded usual expectations. The stage had two conveyer belts at the back which the fairies in particular stood on and danced, and it really added some interesting and wonderful dimensions to the dancing, making the fairies look like they were truly floating. The transition of time between the four acts was conveyed wonderfully through the staging, with the windows being broken and taped and the closed gates growing ivy and trees. It goes without saying that the choreography and dancing was breathtakingly beautiful and wondrous, as they usually are.
Overall, I did enjoy Sleeping Beauty immensely, the music, set, costumes and dancing was beautiful. I just felt at times the plot and storyline was confusing and hard to follow, the characters hard to decipher who was who, and some of the classic tropes of ballet and fairy tales were taken away, which in turn took away some of the beauty of the ballet and the story.