When dancers first attempt a classic role we always hope for revelations. We hope they will show us something new and luminous about Odette or Giselle, we hope they will reveal something extra about themselves as dancers. When they perform their first Sleeping Beauty, however, we simply hope they will survive.
A century after the role was first created, Aurora still ranks as ballet's north face of the Eiger. Ballerinas far more senior than Lauren Cuthbertson have stumbled over the brutally exposing balances of its opening Rose Adagio.
But one reason why Cuthbertson has been given Aurora is that she is a game dancer, as well as a very promising one. So if she did teeter through her first balances, she found her feet to sketch out one of the most independent readings of Aurora I have seen. The key is partly her musical boldness, as she uses the underlying romanticism of Tchaikovsky's score to push her dancing to impetuously full stretch, and partly her instinct for dramatic shape, as she articulates the crescent curves and glittering shafts of the Vision scene with vivid clarity. But the clinching factor is the intelligence with which she inhabits the role, making this Aurora an alert, emotional young woman as well as a ballerina-princess.
Federico Bonelli is in some ways an exemplary partner for a ballerina debut, his transparent technique providing an unflurried constant on stage. But just as I look forward to seeing Cuthbertson's Aurora once she has settled down so I would like to see her pitched against a Prince with a maverick streak to match her own. The chemistry could fizz.
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