|
DAILY NEWS ONLINE |
|
|
|
OTHER EDITIONS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
OTHER LINKS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Deanna School mounts Sleeping Beauty
|
|
|
Sleeping Beauty will bring in two generations on this occasion. It was hard work for Jayasuriya to reach where she is but she can sit back and smile at her enormous contribution to classical ballet in Sri Lanka and the number of girls who have ‘graduated’ from her school, some performing abroad and others teaching this fine art.
Presently the school boasts of over five hundred students from the age of two upwards. She has her own plush, mirrored studio to facilitate the students to stretch out and find their own mistakes and rectify them.
They dance in an open, fresh environment with a teacher who is able to identify the potential and weakness in a student. Being able to relate with kindness to youngsters, her understanding attitude promotes self confidence in all students that make them readily absorbent into any performance.
The greatness of a teacher is to make every pupil feel special and Jayasuriya has the aptitude for it. This has made students improve steadily and with each ballet, there had been a marked improvement. In fact from her ballets which I had seen, there was great amount of dance development noticed in La Bayadere.
Jayasuriya is one of the few qualified teachers who after completing her studies that included her spell under Ruth French who is a major examiner at the Royal Academy of Dance which makes her clearly competent enough to prepare her students for the RAD examinations.
They come off with flying colours and later many have embarked on careers in Australia, England etc. Ballet has been a passion with her ever since she was able to walk and her parents who watched their daughter’s talent, never hesitated to put her on the right track and watched her blossom into a fine dancer, teacher and choreographer that Sri Lanka is proud of.
The first-ever Sleeping Beauty was known as Spyashcheya Krasovitsa in Russia. France called it La Belle and England dubbed it as the Sleeping Princess. It was a ballet with 3 Acts and 4 scenes and originally mounted by Marius Petipa and Iavn Vsevolojsky with music by Tchaikovsky.
The ballet had a long list of credits when it was premiered in January, 1890 at Maryinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg. With its prominent cast, the ballet was considered the fairy-tale with a climax of the Tsarist ballet culture. Petipa had variations for the fairies in the prologue and the Rose Adagio for Aurora and the 4 princes.
There was also the ‘pas de deux’ for Princess Florine and the Blue Bird. Petipa’s grand ‘pas de dex’ in the finale embodied some of his most precious Ideas. The complete ballet of Sleeping Beauty was staged at the La Scala in Milan in 1896 by Giorgio Savocco and the title role was danced by Brianza.
However, the enormous reputations that Speeping Beauty gained in the West was when it was danced as Sleeping Princess in London in 1921 in the Diaghilev’s production. Many great dancers danced in this ballet and many great choreographers choreographed it that included Ashton, MacMillan and Mureyev among others.
Every young ballerina dreamed of dancing Aurora. Great companies like Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Stutgart Ballet, Bolshoi, Kirov, national Ballet of Canada are some names that come into my mind and in whose repertories Sleeping Bauty awaits more calls. The few schools in Sri Lanka too have staged Sleeping Beauty either in excerpts or in one or two Acts.
There will also be a ‘pas de deux’ with Aurora and her four suitors. The experienced Natasha Jayasuriya will dance the Lilac Fairy and much can be expected from her. Set designs in the hands of veteran Mano Chanmugam are bound to enhance the ballet when he puts in all his imagination into this fairy tale.
..................................
|
|
