Search - Dancer's Dream: The Great Ballets of Rudolf Nureyev - Sleeping Beauty on DVD

Another masterpiece in this Paris Opera Ballet series.

J. M WILINSKY | teaneck, NJ United States | 08/14/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This ballet documentary is one of a series on ballets put together by Rudolf Nureyev for the Paris Opera Ballet.(You might find it helpful to read my reviews of the others, as well.) This documentary also includes the history of the ballet and the story of Sleeping Beauty, as well as rehearsals and lots of coaching discussions.(If you are only intersted in a performance of Sleeping Beauty this may not be for you.) By seeing some of the solo variations in rehearsal you can see more detail and gain more insight than in performance, most of the time(but not always!). Watching Elisabeth Platel(she plays princess Aurora) dance and work in rehearsal is an amazing experience. They also show us the special choreography Nureyev provided for the prince, danced by Manuel Legris very accurately. It is amazing!
In this documintary it is Patricia Ruanne (former ballerina with the Royal Ballet) who is the one coaching the principal dancers (in the La Bayadere documentary it was Ghislaine Thesmar). Her coaching is amazingly patient and professional, and a great deal of time is spent on this. Many seamless cuts are made between actual performance, dress rehearsal, and classroom rehearsal, and this helps keep it lively(this is done in all their documentaries in this series). Finally, the costumes, the colors, the scenary(the set designer, Ezio Frigerio, is also interviewed), the video quality, and the sound are all first class!"

Andromeda

Andromeda | Chicago | 02/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love these Paris Opera commentaries of Nureyev-staged ballets. It shows his influence on these excellent dancers. Elizabeth Platel is charming and hard working. I enjoyed immensely her efforts to do the perfect arabesque or the perfect pirouettes and especially her balances in the Rose adagio and Patricia Ruanne telling everybody to not talk while she is trying to concentrate so hard. The breakdown of how she gets from one end of the stage to the other and how to hold her bouquet is very absorbing to watch. One sees how she thinks about what she is doing. I enjoyed also the part where she viewed Manuel Legris in rehearsal trying the impossible jumps that Nureyev required of him and how they practiced their various pas de deux. There is really not much dancing here of the real ballet so it is not something for someone who wants to see the Sleeping Beauty ballet. Rather, it is more for students or those who are curious as to how artists work at what they do."