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My Beautiful Year Evergreen City Ballet's 'The Sleeping Beauty'
March 28, 2010 -- Ikea Performing Arts Center, Renton, Washington Large-scale ballets are a major undertaking by any company, and Evergreen City Ballet has to be lauded for nicely tackling one of ballet’s most iconic, “The Sleeping Beauty.” It’s also a point of pride to hold your head up high when you know your company is at risk of audiences comparing and contrasting with other productions in the region. This production comes about a month on the heels of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s. With choreography by its founding director, Wade Walthall, filling the medium-sized Ikea stage attached to the historic Renton High School [where the great ballet pedagogue of the Dance Theatre of Harlem School, Karel Shook, attended], Evergreen City Ballet gave us a delightful reading that made full use of company, advanced dancers from its academy performance division and production team. Guest dancer former PNB soloist Oleg Gorboulev brought his considerable and elegant ballet breeding and experience to the role of the Prince. His clean, easy lines and technique were a complement.
McConnell did essay very well her other assignments of the afternoon including the Rose Adagio and its long balance en attitude, the Act II Vision and Awakening Pas de Deux where the Prince is led by the Lilac Fairy to see Aurora and then fight Carabosse – Wisten Klein – for her. My only staging fuss is a story one – the Lilac Fairy can save Aurora from Carabosse’s death curse only because she is interrupted in giving her christening gift to the baby Aurora. After the curse, the Lilac Fairy alters the curse by lifting it from death into life and saying instead she shall sleep. In Walthall’s staging, I believe I espied the Lilac Fairy actually completing the giving of her gift before being interrupted by Carabosse’s very dramatic and theatrical entrance. In other versions, the Lilac Fairy gestures to her attendant to stop in mid-stride and therefore the gift is never given.
My wish for this suburban company is that as they continue to grow, they are able to find a larger venue – in terms of stage size – that will parallel their artistic ascendancy and that, importantly, they add live music to all performances whenever and wherever possible. In this case, a grand piano using the piano reduction of the full score would have worked and been my preference. They do use the Auburn Symphony for their “Nutcracker” run while performing in the city of that name, so it would be great to at least have piano elsewhere. I had not been able to see Evergreen City Ballet since their home base moved from Auburn to Renton, and it was a pleasurable afternoon spent in the company of those who love the ballet and believe in its intrinsic value, as well as to enjoy the awakening of another production of “The Sleeping Beauty.”
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by Dean Speer
His experience, too, was helpful when partnering Aurora – Jackie McConnell – who didn’t get quite enough power and push going for her en dedans piqué turns into the Act III grand pas de deux fish dives, [she ended up facing toward the ceiling, rather then the stage floor] so he gallantly and discreetly pushed her around into the correct position, not once but twice, the fish dives being repeated thrice. 
Special recognition should be given to the wardrobe, set and lighting design teams for their talent and work. The costumes were especially beautiful creations.