| Summary: | This episode of Footnotes: The Classics of Ballet is about the Sleeping Beauty. Dancer Frank Augustyn and others discuss how Marius Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty represents a throwback to the early court ballet in its appetite for spectacle, proliferation of divertissements, and disregard for dramatic motivation and characterization. The dancers describe how the principal roles can be performed to bring out their human qualities as well as to display classical ballet technique. The expressive qualities of Tchaikovsky's score are shown in excerpts from the Bluebird pas de deux and the Act III grand pas de deux, and conductor George Crum adds his special insights to a discussion of the interaction of dancers and conductors. The discussion is illustrated by excerpts from a Kirov Ballet performance (choreography by Konstantin Sergeyev after Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa) and footage of Bujones in the Act III male variation.
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