'Beauty' Reawakened

Mason is clearly a dancer's dance company director. At a rehearsal in the Wang Center, the company exhibited none of the nervousness and edginess characteristic of tyrannically led groups. When the rehearsal pianist launched into the mindlessly upbeat music used in dance classes the world over, the dancers laughed and giggled and talked.

"I always say that one of the things I would love to do if I had a magic wand is to enable every dancer to maximize their talent," Mason says. "They don't have all the time in the world, probably a maximum of 20 years. It is not possible to make everybody happy all the time, but we try to give as many opportunities as possible."

She sounds relieved to have put together a production of "Sleeping Beauty" that is in many ways a return to the company's 1946 success. Many of Messel's original designs have been used, and the company has turned away from the very Russian approach that Makarova created a few years ago, returning to its own style and cadence.

"I think there is a tremendous value in looking back," she says. "Although in European terms we are still a young company, as a classical company, I think there is a huge part to play in the education of your audiences and your dancers -- where the roots were, and what gave us the possibility to be where we are now."

What those roots are is a matter of some debate. When the Sadler's Wells Ballet danced "Sleeping Beauty" in 1946, it was using a reconstruction of the original choreography of Marius Petipa from the late 19th century. That reconstruction arrived in London in the baggage of Nicholas Sergeyev, a Russian dance teacher and ballet master who notated many of the classic ballets seen in St. Petersburg and helped spread them in the West.

"He was reputed to have arrived from Paris with this suitcase brimming over with pieces of paper, containing these treasures," Mason says. "And it was from his notes that de Valois saw these ballets come to life."

So were the dancers who put "Sleeping Beauty" on the stage in 1946 simply borrowing a Russian dance tradition? Not according to Croce, the dance critic. "They thought they were prolonging the afterglow of the Maryinsky twilight," she wrote, referring to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where the original Tchaikovsky-Petipa "Sleeping Beauty" premiered. "When in fact they were seeing the dawn of a great new classic for English dancers."

Over the years, the "Englishness" of the Royal Ballet's approach to works such as "Sleeping Beauty" has been a continuing source of debate and fascination. When Makarova, in 2003, tried to put them into a more Russian mold, the company found it vexing.

"I think for people who had worked on other Royal Ballet productions, it was extremely difficult to suddenly try and phrase things in a very different manner," Mason says.

"They were dreadful," says Crisp of the Financial Times. "Makarova wanted to show how it was danced in St. Petersburg. They didn't understand the fullness of the Petersburg style. They didn't understand the 100 years of tradition that lie behind everything Makarova does."

Crisp says he is no fan of the "cozy, prim way" that some English dancers interpret Petipa. But that same style is what endears the Royal Ballet to other critics, and audiences. The big, forceful, athletic approach of the Russians is softened a bit, tempered, says Mason, by a "fluid softness in the upper body."

"The way that we would approach a lot of the classical work is not in a flamboyant, virtuosic way, but a little more restrained, and conservative," she says.

Mason stresses that the new production is not a slavish re-creation of the old one. The 1946 production had evolved over the years, and because Messel did other productions of the work, it wasn't easy to divine his original intent.

"It was impossible to know which design belonged to which production," she says.

Christopher Carr, senior ballet master for the company, says that among the historical evidence they relied on was an old movie, without sound, made by someone in the audience when the company was appearing in New York.

"Just to see it again," he says, sighing. The film captured two of the company's greats, Fonteyn and Michael Somes, moving about among Messel's designs in silence.

But even with all the historical evidence assembled, Mason says she wasn't interested in exact reproduction.

"Again, it was after the war, everything was rationed, and times were very tight," she says. "So there obviously wasn't anything like the opportunity to give [Messel] full advantage of a large company and say, 'Design what you like because the money pot is endless.' "

The money pot isn't endless today, either. Wigs and shoes from the Makarova production were used, an economy that, Mason says, "made me feel it was a little like after the war." But in other places, the production trumps Messel, with new, more vibrantly colored costumes (very controversial among the English critics) and new designs for Act 2. Mason also brought in one of the ballet world's most sought-after young choreographers, Christopher Wheeldon, to re-create the "Garland Dance," which had been done for previous productions by the company's signature choreographers, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan.

"Do I want to go back to Ashton, and I thought, no," says Mason, about the decision to add Wheeldon's vision to the mix. "Let's go forward. It's very much a production that looks back but also looks forward."

The verdict, in London at least, has been generally positive. A critic for the Observer hailed it as "a traditional and quintessentially English production." Crisp praised Wheeldon's new "Garland Dance" but was in general guarded: "It is all very nice. And very nostalgic," he wrote. "And woolly-minded."

Nostalgia is the key word, and American audiences are probably fortunate to have less of it, in regard to this production, than English ballet lovers. The English have fussed over this ballet, and this production, for 60 years now. Would it hamper the company if it were addicted to the popular, big-production story ballets? Can the company grow if it is constantly looking back to a rose-tinted vision of the past?

Mason is alert to the concerns, the gripes about the costumes, and the constant need to renegotiate the balance between tradition and new work that expands the company's horizons.

"We have a lot to live up to. I know that," she says. But she adds with evident affection: "I think it looks beautiful."