James Streeter

Let’s face it, The Sleeping Beauty runs the high risk of being a bit of a bore. A wonderfully inventive score by Tchaikovsky fires it up of course, but precious little drama emerges after nasty Carabosse gatecrashes the royal christening, and there’s too much imperial parading and courtly kowtowing throughout. Connoisseurs may relish what survives of Petipa’s choreography as a lexicon of academic classicism, but it has to be magnificently danced if it is to be animated. And it almost never is. English National Ballet has revived Kenneth MacMillan’s production, originally staged by American Ballet Theater in 1987. On the first night of the current run, the lighting was prosaic

Ballet companies have become dismally timid about exploring their 20th-century heritage: everything nowadays must be either box-fresh new or a fairy-tale classic, which seems to me a recipe for an unbalanced diet. So I’m pleased that under the directorship of Federico Bonelli, Northern Ballet is pluckily dusting off neglected treasures of the recent past. Last year brought Hans van Manen’s exquisite Adagio Hammerklavier (1973) back to life; this year, it’s the turn of Rudi van Dantzig’s setting of Strauss’s Four Last Songs (1977), danced to the recording made by Gundula Janowitz and Herbert von Karajan. A dark angelic figure, hungry for some grim reaping, hovers over four youthful couples in