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Unhurried and unforced, Julie Kent did just that in ABT's Sleeping Beauty on Tuesday night, a breath of fresh air in what was otherwise an immensely effortful production. A natural Aurora, by turns playful, polite, and provocative and always just a shade humbler than her valiant suitor, Marcelo Gomes she united movement with storytelling more instinctively than any of her fellow dancers. Where others, such as her bevy of good fairies, seemed emotionally distant from the choreography or, at the opposite extreme, straining to act the part with painted-on smiles Kent relaxed into her character and reveled in it, without overstatement. A few showed comparable expertise: Yuriko Kajiya, as the Fairy of Joy, infused her solos with a startling, hummingbird-like energy, and as the evening lurched to a close, Maria Riccetto offered a refreshing presence, moving seamlessly with Blaine Hoven through the Bluebird pas-de-deux. Still, from her unassuming entrance in Act I to her romantic reawakening, Kent was our most reliable conduit into a fairy-tale world, which, despite its colossal attempts at reeling us in, often left us pining for a way out.

Transporting the audience to a far-away time and place, or trying to, were set designer Tony Walton and costume designer Willa Kim. Their shared taste for lavish abundance had moments of redeeming value, but generally, they distracted us from what should be the focal point of a ballet the dancers, dancing. Too often, our attention to the choreography had to compete with the production's over-ripe trappings: the bulbous turrets of Aurora's castle, festooned with leafy boughs and flower-blossoms; a predictably deep, dark forest, drifting by on a painted scrim, where droopy skeletons dangled from rotting vines. Blissfully, the extravagance subsided during a spare, barely adorned hunt scene in Act II, in which silver fairies, twenty in all, formed quiet constellations to guide a yearning Gomes along his way. Counterbalancing Kent, an austere Michele Wiles danced the part of the Lilac Fairy. If Kent gave the illusion of spontaneity, Wiles danced as though she had studiously rehearsed the part, her technique stunning but her character lacking depth. Aside from her violet tutu, there was little to distinguish her from the members of her supporting quintet. With a stately sobriety that barely budged, Wiles resisted the emotional peaks and valleys of the plot, never fully convincing us of her superior virtue. Her role demanded a more sensitive, less severe actress, someone with the maternal leanings of a godmother, however those would manifest themselves on pointe.
 

We cannot entirely blame Wiles, or her fellow company members her dutiful attendants in the Prologue, the quaint villagers of Act I for their general reluctance to act the ballet, rather than dancing it solidly and forcing a smile along the way. The melodrama of the production pantomimic gesturing at every dramatic turn, eruptions of dry ice at the coming and going of the evil Carabosse (Martine Van Hamel) placed ingenuous expression almost out of the dancers' reach. Next to the almost cartoonish scenery, anyone's performance risked looking like a caricature of itself, no matter how deeply felt.

The decision to produce Sleeping Beauty brings with it the challenge of retelling an age-old tale that most of us already know, of casting it in a newly revealing light. In this production, that light never quite surfaced, and we found ourselves asking a pretty basic question: do we even need ballet, executed by such highly skilled performers, to tell this familiar story? Kent, thankfully, convinced us that we did. But ultimately, this Sleeping Beauty felt more like an exaggerated nod to tradition than an attempt to breathe new life into a classic. If Petipa were alive today, he might tell his successors to stop trying so hard.