Moscow City Ballet Sleeping Beauty Review

Kings Theatre Southsea – Sunday 10 February 2019

Reviewed by Nicky Wyatt

4****

The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty is brought to life on stage by this Moscow City Ballet troupe.

Probably one of the best known stories for many of us. We are treated to the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky beautifully executed by The Hungarian Simfonieta under the masterful direction of conductor Ivan Shavruk. Only 12 rows from the front I did have a slight concern that the music may have been overpowering, I was wrong it was perfect.

The set created of many backdrops of forests and then buildings is simple yet beautiful , the colours used create an ethereal fairy land feel to the proceedings.

There is a big ensemble for this production with some fabulous dancers that look as if they are literally mirror images of each other, perfect timing and seamless movements. There were a couple that looked left out as they had very little to do apart from hand gestures.

The Goodness /Lilac Fairy (Polina Dyachkora) gets my vote as being the one that really set the stage alight with her beautiful expressions, such a graceful dancer that covered so much of the stage. She was simply spellbinding to watch.

Caraboose (Kirill Kasatkin) is such a great baddie! His movements and expressions create exactly the atmosphere of danger, delivered with perfect comedy timing as well . The scenes with him and the dancers are eerie with a hint of danger.

Princess Aurora (Polina Tokareva) has immense poise and strength as she dances alone, not so much when she dances with Prince Florimund (Talgat Kozhabaev) . He dances with strength and composure that commands respect of the stage but together they just didn’t seem comfortable.

The costumes in this production are wonderful if a bit traditional so much so that the whole production had a cosy almost Christmas feel to it.

I absolutely loved this as did so many of the young ballet dancers in the audience.

Totally Spellbinding!