SLEEPING BEAUTY THE BALLET A TRIUMPH IN CLASSICAL STYLE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 7.2.23) What a contrast between Sleeping Beauty the ballet performed the first weekend in July by the Academy of Dance and Art and Sleeping Beauty: the Ugly Truth staged mid-last month at Brookhouse School. Both were largely performed by children except that in the ballet, the adult roles were actually performed by adults. For example, in the ballet, the roles of King Florestan, Queen Leah, Prince Desire, and even Princess Aurora were all performed by ‘grown ups’, meaning Brian Mulari, Sally Shaw, Anderson Omondi, and Juliet Duckworth were all well-suited for their roles. That was in clear cut contrast to ‘The Ugly Truth’ which enabled children to acquaint themselves with this classic fairy tale while making light of the story, and having fun with the original tale which got transformed into a spoof and a satire. But if you were looking for an enchanting production, filled with beauty, grace, elegance, and a whole story told in the language of dance, then the ballet staged last Sunday at Kenya National Theatre was for you. Both shows were engaging and entertaining. Both were fantasies filled with fairies, both kind and cruel. In the ballet, (where the interest was more on ceremony than spoof) the fairies were far more central to the magical realm of otherworldly elegance, grandeur, and glittering beauty. They played a strategic role, first as emissaries bringing gifts to the new-born princess, then becoming the object of the wicked fairy’s envy and the incentive eliciting her cruel revenge on the innocent child Princess Aurora, the younger version of whom was played by Jodi Andrade. The fairies also played a glorious role after the formal pre-wedding dance known as a ‘polonaise’. In fact, there are so many types of fairies, one could hardly keep track of them all. First, you had the Crystal Fountain Fairy, then the Enchanted Garden Fairy, the Woodland Glade Fairy, Songbird Fairy, Golden Bird Fairy, and finally, the most powerful good fairy, the Lilac Fairy (Rachel Kinyanjui). The wicked fairy was simply known as Carabosse (Knight Ochieng who was double cast with Charles Wiglly) and she has an entourage of ‘Dark Companions’ who were her bad fairies. Then you had a huge bunch of Fairies of Vision. Seeing that the Academy is a school of dance, it’s no wonder that their Sleeping Beauty needed to cater for all the children in the school. That meant giving even the three-year-olds their moment to dance on the National Theatre stage. According to Juliet Duckworth, (who in addition to playing Princess Aurora, is also one of the Executive Producers of the show with her mother Pernille who founded the Academy in 2009), there were at minimum 120 dance students in the cast. That goes some distance to explain why there were also so many delightful dancing children who were either Silver, Sapphire, Diamond, Gold or just Jewels or Fireflies. There were also many cute Cat children. There were not quite as many Blue Birds. But what they had was a handsome protector in the stately form of Blue Bird, Arnold Osane Onyango whose grace was matched with the Princess Florine (who was double cast as Annalise Wolf and Vanessa Kibot). One can’t name all the young ones who took part in this delightful performance, but one has to acknowledge this Olympian feat directed by Arnie Umayam, assisted by Rachel Kinyanjui, and Nadine Riehl. But one can take note of the costuming which was color coded so that every set of fairies was one color, be it a royal or baby blue, sunshine yellow, red, white or deep black. And all the costumes, be they the Queen’s velvet cape or the fairies’ crinoline skirts and the principal dancers’ tutus, all looked fabulous thanks to Josephine Kaiyu, Veronica Kitake, and Juliet who also worked with her mom Fernille as part of the Backstage crew. The set designs were also well done, hand-painted I was told by Arnold Osamu and it was impressive to see backdrops being lifted and dropped in a timely style, without a hiccup that was obvious Finally, one has to thank Arnie Umayam who worked closely with Rachel Kinyanjui, Nadine Riehl and Saidi Mwinyi to choreograph the whole show. In this age of youtube, they could have adapted quite a bit of what can be found on the internet. But the focus on both grace and athleticism meant that beauty was with nearly all the dancers in this lovely ballet.