The Dawn of the Martins Era

By Martha Duffy

It's a brisk, bold spectacle, a radical new look at a beloved full-length classic, The Sleeping Beauty. It's not perversely set in a Paris slum or Sherwood Forest, as an avant-gardist might have done. The sumptuous fairy-tale illusion, as well as almost all Petipa's choreography, has been retained. But The Sleeping Beauty is usually a dozy night at the ballet -- a prologue and three acts with three intermissions. Peter Martins' $2.8 million version, unveiled at New York City Ballet in the past two weeks, is in two acts, with several smart cuts and breathtakingly fast transitions between scenes requiring set changes.

For Martins, 44, the production is a triumph, establishing him as the premier figure in American classical dance. He was already a power to reckon with as head of what is often described as the world's finest classical company. Running a ballet troupe is a tricky business. In addition to day-to- day operations, fund raising and the ceaseless development of talent, a director must have artistic impact on the world of the arts, or the troupe's name will lose its luster. Martins' Beauty cuts like a stiff breeze through increasingly remote traditions. No major company has managed such a rigorous rethinking of a full-length work in more than a decade.

The break happened none too soon. Martins took over running the company at George Balanchine's death in 1983, and he has had the ghost of the great choreographer shadowing his every move. He tried to put his personal stamp on City Ballet with his American Music Festival in 1988, but the grand effort was a failure.

"I like to be presumptuous," says Martins. "I wanted this ballet here because this is the house of Tchaikovsky. Here we understand and revere him. Other companies have used the score like wallpaper music." In the dance world, those are fighting words. American Ballet Theater and San Francisco Ballet have recently restaged the work; Britain's Royal Ballet, the Soviet Kirov and Bolshoi companies have versions they consider historic. "Tchaikovsky's score markings are very close to what I want," notes Martins. "But people have been selfish through the years and accommodate themselves with slow tempi."

Fast-forwarded or merely strict, the pace is a challenge to the dancers, particularly the ballerina who plays the heroine, Princess Aurora. She must appear to be a quicksilver sprite, but with only one intermission, the role is brutal. Of the five alternating ballerinas, the radiant Darci Kistler best maintained the illusion that she had just thought up these steps and was dancing them for the first time. Kyra Nichols stood out for the moral quality, essential in a fairy tale, that she brought to the part.

Will there be more full-length extravaganzas? The man who has devoted his energies to short pieces, many of them sternly modern, won't rule them out. His next innovation, scheduled for spring 1992, will be something more up to date: a week of new ballets, which may never make the regular repertory, to keep the creative juice flowing. As for now, he imagines how Mr. B. might react to his Beauty. "You see, dear, not bad," says the mentor. Counters Martins: "Better than not bad." Much better.