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BrumHour saw The Sleeping Beauty at the invite of Birmingham Royal Ballet.
For Brum Radio’s Interval Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Beatrice Parma and Tzu-Chao Chou talk about their first lead performances together in The Sleeping Beauty as it heads on tour around the UK.
By Dave Massey twitter.com/BrumHour
Review: Birmingham Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty at Birmingham Hippodrome
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐A triumph!
Birmingham Royal Ballet directed by Carlos Acosta, choreography by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Peter Wright with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Birmingham Royal Ballet is back on the Birmingham stage at the Hippodrome with Sir Peter Wright’s The Sleeping Beauty and it is an epic, huge production with lavish costumes and an old European royalty flavoured sets.
After being cursed by The Fairy Caraboose (Daria Stanciulescu), Princess Aurora (Yu Kurihara) falls into a huge magical sleep which also curses the kingdom to sleep. A forest grows around the kingdom over many years and one day young Prince Florimund (Lachlan Monaghan) enters the forest and discovers Aurora sleeping. Can he break the spell?
Told over three acts and a prologue, this is certainly one of the longest ballets around, thankfully each section at no more than forty minutes. There is probably still the chance to cut at least another ten minutes, but when it is Tchaikovsky, where do you make the cuts without annoying people?
This is quite an ensemble ballet featuring many large group moments. Seeing the dancers working in unison is fantastic, especially with the complex footwork. Yu Kurihara and Lachlan Monaghan were excellent together at this performance and as Yu throws herself head first towards the ground Lachlan ensures she is in perfect position every time.
The beautiful music from Royal Ballet Sinfonia really elevates the story and I found the violins to be particularly hauntingly rich in tone.
I’d suggest ballet newbies might try a shorter ballet unless they are ready for the whole thing, but I loved every moment of this and would recommend to any ballet lover to see. Each performance features different leads and among those across this production include César Morales‘ farewell performance performing with Miki Mizutani, Principal guest Matthew Ball with Céline Gittens, Momoko Hirata with Mathias Dingman and Yaoqian Shang with Max Maslen.
A triumph! Birmingham Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty is at Birmingham Hippodrome until 2nd March 2024. Book tickets here: birminghamhippodrome.com/calendar/brb-the-sleeping-beauty. Discover more about Birmingham Royal Ballet here: brb.org.uk.
