No one watches The Sleeping Beauty for the plot. “They dance, they fall asleep, they dance again,” was how one critic summed up the 1890 premiere in St Petersburg.
It isn’t the fairy tale story that captured subsequent generations, but Tchaikovsky’s majestic score and the intricate geometry of Marius Petipa’s choreography (he worked out patterns for his group dances with papier mâché dolls). Productions must find meaning beyond technical accomplishment, but at the Royal Ballet it remains thoroughly pretty, but unmotivated – decorous but often fearsomely dull.
