Research On "the Sleeping Beauty"Ballet

The last decades of19th century is the golden age of Russian classical ballet. Among the classical works,"Sleeping Beauty","Nutcracker","Swan Lake" are the3most famous ballet created by Tschaikovsky, Petipa and his student Ivanov. However, only "Sleeping Beauty" has a pure descent from Petipa, the father of the classical ballet, and it t also represents the highlight of his life."Sleeping Beauty" has its premiere at Mariinsky theatre in1890. It created a marvelous royal spectacle with its stirring music, magnificent dance movements and luxurious costumes at a time. This so called "ballet-feerie", which was created on the basis of the "feerie", was considered the most expensive production of Mariinsky theatre at that time. This ballet was originated from PerrauIt’s fairy-tale, truly reappears the time of Louis XIV and pays its respects to the French court in17-18century. Petipa not only tells the miraculous life journey of princess Aurora, but also choreographed the ballet on the consideration of French court dance and march. He put graceful French style, technical Italian style and narrative Russian style together, and created a versatile dance with high technique in every scene. Furthermore in the last scene, the appearance of the people in fairy tales creates an outstanding artistry, and let "Sleeping Beauty" stay on the international stage ever since its premiere. Today, this ballet works still challenges the economic strength and dancers’ ability of a ballet company.This article is faithful to the original appearance of Petipa’s version, Mainly using the method of case analysis, document analysis and comparative research, analyses the ballet work in all aspects from the script, music, choreography, costume to scenery, in the meantime concludes the structure of Grand ballet in classical period, summarizes the classicism-characteristic of "Sleeping Beauty", so as to explain the reason why "Sleeping Beauty" is honored as "the Ballet Encyclopaedia in19th Century","the Highlight of the Classical Ballet" and " the Highlight of the Father of the Classical Ballet".