The Sydney Opera House
November 21st, 2025
One week after closing night of the Australian Ballet’s exhilarating contemporary triple bill Prism, I was a little concerned how Petipa’s classic The Sleeping Beauty would hold up. Yet equally, I was excited. It is one of the Tchaikovsky/Petipa great three and, of the three, it demands the purest technique — a thrill in itself. I imagine the dancers, who already performed The Sleeping Beauty in Adelaide and Brisbane earlier this year, were also looking forward to stepping back into that mode and testing themselves against pure classicism to round their year off.
You could feel the buzz in the audience: a story ballet sprinkled with some fairies, evil and magic to close the season at the Sydney Opera House. The Sleeping Beauty has all that and more, and in pre-holiday spirits I came ready for this flight of “romantasy”.
Designer Gabriela Tylesova’s ornate frame curtain — like an old book’s frontispiece revealing a glimpse of the story’s 17th-century world beyond — hinted this production, by former Artistic Director David McAllister, would not disappoint.
McAllister explained that one of his ambitions with his 2015 version was to make a little more sense of the story — even if only for himself. I immediately got that in the opening apron scene with its all-important, though often rushed, inciting incident. For the first time, I watched closely as the dithering Master of Ceremonies, Catalabutte, performed in great Molière-esque farcical fashion by Jarryd Madden, made that one terrible judgement call — not to invite the wicked fairy Carabosse to Princess Aurora’s christening. Cue groans. What a schoolboy error! — Keep your enemies close and all that.
And so the curtain rises on that fateful christening and Tylesova’s sumptuous designs. But here was the first problem with the evening for me. A ballet such as this needs to be viewed, to quote William Forsythe, “in the middle, somewhat elevated.” From there, you experience the full beauty and symmetry of the design and choreography. Formations weave and complement; balances, pirouettes and brisé volés astonish and sparkle as they should. I was seated to the side and somewhat low. While my seat gave me a great experience of the orchestra, it also meant I missed the full visual impact and could see too clearly hairlines under wigs, faces under rat heads, nervous wobbles and beads of perspiration. It feels unfair to remark on this knowing how much hard work had gone on, but that was my view from seat G37.
But even with that excuse, I did not think that opening night’s performance was the company at its best, having just seen Prism twice in the past two weeks, where I was wowed by the dancers’ spectacular technique and wonderfully quiet pointe shoes. To be fair, I wouldn’t be surprised if the overactive smoke machine announcing the fairies’ entrance put them off their game. I genuinely worried they’d all be asphyxiated — now there’s a different plotline.
Benedicte Bemet’s interpretation of Aurora was very endearing. As an artist, she has the rare ability to make you quiet inside. I appreciated watching her thoughtful growth — from joyous 16-year-old, to yearning apparition, to a more mature woman choosing her prince. McAllister spoke of wanting to give his Aurora more agency, and you feel that in the final scene. It was also a special moment seeing Kirsty Martin as Queen watching on caringly — one of those small moments that gives you a sense of our national ballet company’s family and lineage.
Bemet was well matched with Chengwu Guo’s Prince Desiré. I was particularly moved by their Act II performances, equally full of grace and softness through the upper body, with consummate technique and control below — a physical metaphor depicting a kind of well-matched moral strength in its own right. Their Act III pas de deux drew thunderous applause. It carries the whole emotional weight of a three-act ballet, and Tchaikovsky’s music, so artfully shaped by conductor Jonathan Lo and the Opera Australia Orchestra, did its part in lifting the moment. My eyes welled – a good sign.
The third act is always helped by the delightful Bluebird pas de deux (one David McAllister himself is so famous for). A small note for fellow story geeks: the Bluebirds, unlike the other characters, do not appear in Charles Perrault’s 1697 Histoires ou contes du temps passé. They come instead from the Baroness d’Aulnoy’s 1697 fairytales — and, as another aside, she was the writer who first coined the literary term “fairytale.” Best not to get too logical about any of this; it is simply a charming divertissement, and it was well danced by Yuumi Yamada and Cameron Holmes.
And on the subject of logic, fairytales are Teflon to it. So, while I fully appreciated McAllister’s attempt to make sense of the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale characters (Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella) at the wedding celebration (a curious addition made by the original 1890 librettist Ivan Vsevolozhsky), it only raised more questions for me about where exactly we were by the end of the story — and how far my suspension of disbelief could be stretched.
Seen through today’s lens, a lot has changed since McAllister created this 2015 version, particularly around conversations about non-consensual sexual advances. I wondered how I would respond to that impulsive kiss on the lips of a sleeping teenager, albeit in this fairytale context. I can’t help but think it is problematic and outdated, and yet here it passed so quickly — almost a missable peck. Was that even a kiss? Mostly I was distracted by the enormous key used to unlock the cryogenic Fabergé egg in which Aurora slept. But for those interested in such questions, there is a whole Internet of debate to explore on the topic.
I will have to return for another viewing — this time sitting “in the middle, somewhat elevated” to see the full vision, and to experience other casts as they find their classical groove again. One of the great pleasures of a traditional ballet is precisely that: watching a company settle into the material, seeing how different dancers reveal different shades, and noticing the small details that only emerge over multiple viewings.
Having now spent fifteen years outside ballet companies, I find myself newly appreciative of what it means to have a national company of this calibre performing at the Sydney Opera House with a live orchestra. And what did I love most? Returning to everything this artform still offers us — the familiar steps we look for, the music we know, the stories we question. It remains one of the most reliable ways to slip out of the everyday world for a few hours and feel, somehow, more deeply nourished.
-Emma Sandall