After our positive experience with Star Wars in Concert at the Morristown Performing Arts Center, we looked at their upcoming events and noticed that the New Jersey Ballet would perform The Sleeping Beauty in its entirety. Intrigued, we procured tickets to see one of the state’s few professional performing groups we have not reviewed. 

The Ballet itself is one of the four most performed ballets in our time, accompanied on that list by The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, and Swan Lake. The only of those not composed by Tchaikovsky is Sergey Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. 

I always prefer dance performances with live music, but such artistic delights are rare except among the most popular ballet houses, and they do not always opt for that additional cost. We enjoyed a quality, non-distracting recording that allowed us to focus on the dancers this evening. 

The lyrical nature of Tchaikovsky’s compositions matches ideally with the ballet, and over the years, many of these performances have specific and strict choreographies that are generally accepted in this medium. This evening’s performance followed the standard choreography of the French-Russian dancer and instructor Marius Petipa (1818-1910). 

Even with standardized music and choreography, ballet performances differ drastically due to the precision of the group movements, the choice of smooth or sharp transitions, spacing, along with the dancers’ posture, form, length, expression, and strength.

Many ballet companies today bring in dancers who are also trained in, and draw heavily on, popular, modern and jazz dance forms. This comes through in the performance with greater expression and some liberties in movement to tell the story with greater feeling. Other companies hold to the old standard, maintaining the purity of the form. 

Prior to the performance, we were introduced to the company through a media presentation of the company dancing throughout the state at various locations. From this advertisement, I expected our performance would be infused with a more liberal and emotive modern approach to the ballet. 

I was pleasantly surprised throughout the performance at the degree to which the production remained true to the pure form and movements. The only consistent variation I noticed occurred in the faces of the performers which were often more expressive than the common ballet. I particularly appreciated Carabosse’s (Ilse Kapteyn) approach as the slighted fairy. 

The New Jersey Ballet is the perfect type of performance to bring young and aspiring dancers to watch. It is professional, approachable, and classy. For fans of the genre, they do it a great justice and it is a far superior performance than one will see from local troupes. 

You can learn more about The New Jersey Ballet and get tickets to another performance this weekend by visiting them online.

^{*we were invited to facilitate a feature, all opinions are our own.*}