With six performances under my belt this week, I am going to sound as though I have not got a critical bone in my body when I say that I can’t ever remember having seen six such wonderful performances. Overall the production looks sparkling, with all the dancers looking extremely well rehearsed.

I’ve always loved this production with its sumptuous black and gold décor and fabulous costumes, but it is the attention to detail that makes it. I love the way the Princes in act 1 interact and the way all the dancers on stage look as though they are participating rather than just decorating the set. At the start of Act 3, when the curtains open on Catalabutte (a masterful performance by David Morse), it feels as if he really is inviting us to the celebrations.

During the course of the week we saw four Princess Auroras and three Prince Florimunds. Opening night honours went to Nao Sakuma and Chi Cao. For me, Nao is the epitome of Aurora – she looks so young and vulnerable in her first appearance and you see her gradually blossom into a young woman. She is dancing at the top of her form and the Rose Adagio was enthralling. She really interacted with the Princes and the other members of the cast.

Chi Cao was just magical as Prince Florimund – good acting and partnering, coupled with virtuoso dancing made this performance to relish. Marion Tait is incomparable as Carabosse and Sylvia Jiminez was a beautiful and graceful Lilac Fairy. Ambra Vallo and Kosuke Yamamoto were stunning as the Bluebirds.

On Thursday afternoon, newcomer Letizia Guiliani made her debut with the company, wonderfully partnered by Iain Mackay. Letizia looked tentative at first but gained in confidence throughout and came over as a glorious exotic bird. Iain also partnered the radiant Ambra Vallo in a fabulous performance on Friday night. Ambra is not as vulnerable looking as Nao but is quietly flirtatious with the Princes. She was dazzling in the grand pas. Iain has proved yet again that he is a fabulous partner and he is a real Prince who commands the stage. When not dancing Florimund himself he shared the honours of leading Prince in the Rose Adagio with Robert Parker. Both of them were wonderfully supportive to the Auroras they partnered. It is such a technically taxing dance that the partnering skills of the Princes are critical to its success.

Elisha Willis had Robert Parker as her Florimund. They had 2 performances. Elisha looked nervous on her debut on Thursday night but was absolutely radiant last night (Saturday). She’s another dancer who has the quality of being able to look vulnerable and young while dancing strongly. Robert Parker was every inch the hot young prince around town – his solos were fabulous, his acting understated but clear and his dancing impeccable.

My favourite performance was Saturday afternoon where Nao and Chi even managed to surpass their opening night performance. There was magic in the air.

During the week we had two new Carabosses – Victoria Marr and Samara Downs. Both were superb, Samara was particularly malevolent and, for such a young dancer, she has a wonderfully dramatic command of the stage. Victoria Marr managed to be both wicked and sexy. At one point, when Florimund is searching for Aurora, it almost looked as though she had enticed him to run away with her! One of my chums commented that you could infer from her performance that she was the other half of the Lilac Fairy.

As I stated earlier, all the dancers looked together and well-rehearsed. Unfair though it is, the ones who caught my eye were Laura Purkiss (wonderful as the Fairy of Song), Arancha Baselga, the always sparkling Carrie Johnson (who lights up the stage), Tyrone Singleton (with his commanding stage presence and beautiful dancing) and Alexander Campbell. Chris Larsen and Rory Mackay were priceless as Gallison.

The whole week at the Lowry was sold out and there was a real buzz about the theatre that only added to the excitement. Roll on Birmingham.

The Lowry Centre, Salford Quays, 21st January 2006, 7.30 pm

I wonder if there are symptoms for over-exposure to Sleeping Beauty? A heightened sense of proportion, perhaps? A greater sense of musicality? A sense that one is beginning to walk around adopting the most aristocratic of manners? I sat wondering this during the Overture to my umpteenth Sleeping Beauty since the New Year. But then, as a great man surely once said, “When you tire of Beauty, you tire of life.”

Thus was I watching Peter Wright’s glorious 1984 production in the Star-ship Enterprise, otherwise known as The Lowry Centre, Salford Quays. I confess to you all, here and now, that I was a virgin to this production, but other than Vikharev’s re-construction of the 1890 production for the Kirov, I would not hesitate to suggest that I have never seen a more splendid staging. Indeed, I think we can see in Wright’s production references to the Imperial Beauty. As in the 1890 staging, the Lilac Fairy is a mimed character role. Here, her variation in the Prologue (choreographed in 1914 by Lopukhov) is given to the Fairy of Joy. Dramatically, I find this works rather well because it postpones the presentation of the Lilac Fairy’s gift to the infant Aurora until after Carabosse has released her curse and thus solves any problems we might have (which other productions present) in wondering why the Lilac Fairy has been allowed to present two gifts. Peter Wright has re-choreographed the Garland Waltz, into which Act 1 swiftly opens (no naughty seamstresses here). It is clean and spare in its movement, only the women hold garlands and it looks so much less cluttered in its stage patterns, much more so the Macmillan’s fussy arrangement recently seen at ENB. Wright has also not fallen into the trap of allowing cutesy children to populate the Waltz and for this we must be grateful. The Waltz also serves as a means of allowing the four suitors to enter the stage – each one of them delightfully characterized as fops, each one clearly miffed at seeing the others there – beautiful little cameo roles.

I presume the reason to choreograph the Panorama was because of the need for this production to be easily tour-able, and so we see Prince Florimund running up and down passages of fairy spirits guiding him towards the castle of King Florestan, wherein he encounters sleeping courtiers whom he tries, unsuccessfully, to waken. As Wright allows for the complete Entr’acte music here there is time for a rather fascinating passage in which Florimund appears to be the subject of a battle of wills between Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy – the one luring him away, the other charming him further into the castle.

Philip Prowse’s magisterial designs and costumes are a wonder of historical invention and beauty. They evoke perfectly the Francophile sentiment which Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky intended to create and if you look carefully at the emblem encrusted on Catalabutte’s cloak in the final act you see a vision of the sun, Apollo and Louis XIV to whom this ballet was intended as a homage.

About the dancing I have certain reservations. The production has clearly been rehearsed well by Marion Tate and Desmond Kelly and the dancers dance the flesh and bones of the choreography most accurately, but (and it is quite a big but), there seems to me no soul to the dance: Petipa is not running through this company as its life blood. One does not get a sense of complete harmony in port de bras, of bodies as an organic whole, cloaked in music and dance, of legs and arms moving, undulating, in perfect proportion with each other. It looks rather like “work-in-progress”, and very worthy progress it is, but not altogether complete.

Elisha Willis could make a very good Aurora, but I would venture that she needs to be more sure of herself. In the Rose Adagio, she has all the technique and now she just needs to cool it and relax. She is on firmer ground once this Herculean feat is over and she is most touching in the Vision Scene. I would hope for a little more development in the character during the course of the ballet: the Bride Aurora should be more mature, more radiant, than the Princess Aurora.

Of course in all of the above, there is the venerable exception of Robert Parker (who it is always a pleasure and an honour to see). Here we see Classical dancing of the most noble kind. As the only British male Principal (in either of the Royal companies) capable of dancing Classical roles, he should be declared a National Institution. Here is dancing worthy of this fabulous production.

Silvia - we have already seen Silvia's dramatic qualities when she danced Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Hopefully we'll see her as Lise in the summer. So far, I have really enjoyed her performances.

I shall look out for Iain Mackay. I do think that Robert Parker is something special. There was one moment in the Vision Scene, when he mimes to the Lilac Fairy that he has fallen in love with Aurora and begs her to take him to the castle. Everthing about his movement was totally at one with the music and he seemed really to be pouring out his heart. My heart was melted.

p.s. Thank you for the directions to the Lowry (on a Not Dance Thread some time ago). They worked a treat!!

It's going to be good over the next few years seeing some of the more junior members, already so promising, realising their full potential.

Does anyone know their names (they were not given in the cast list)?

Having now had both Janet's and your recommendation to watch Ian McKay as a Classical talent I shall certainly look out more closely in the future. I am not necessarily sure Yamamoto has the classical lines to make a sensational Bluebird, but I agree he had all the steps.