Allison Montroy
amontroy@mustangdaily.net
The classic “Sleeping Beauty” story will leap to life at Cal Poly’s Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center on Friday in a performance by Moscow’s Russian National Ballet. The dance company’s many stars of the Russian ballet scene join together every year for an international tour and performed “Swan Lake” at Cal Poly in 2011.
Cal Poly Arts director Steve Lerian said the 2011 performance was “stunning.”
“While dance is often not an easy sell here, the community always responds to this ballet,” Lerian said. “The big stories make them popular on an international front.”
While contemporary dance often has an abstract theme, classical ballet’s “linear story and continuity” makes for “easier consuming,” Lerian said.
With contemporary dance, “you’re challenged to try to make sense of it all,” Lerian said. “But classical ballet makes it a lot easier to do that.”
Lerian said students will “appreciate the spectacle from an emotional standpoint.”
“It’s an ethereal experience,” Lerian said. “You feel like they’re floating above the ground the whole time. It’s hard to imagine the human body doing the things they do, like dancing on pointe for five minutes.”
Lerian said he enjoys watching “big ensemble pieces” from the Russian National Ballet, where large groups of dancers are onstage doing “spectacular leaps and throws.”
“I love to watch the synchronicity of it, how it becomes organic,” Lerian said. “They move like a flock of birds.”
In a free pre-show lecture, dance professor emeritus and former head of dance at Cal Poly Moon Ja Minn Suhr will explain the history and three different acts of “Sleeping Beauty,” different types of ballet costumes and some of the ballet terminology and techniques the audience can look out for during the ballet.
Lerian said the audience will greatly benefit from the 35-minute discussion.
“She loves talking about this stuff and really knows about it,” Lerian said. “It’s like the difference of going to a museum without a guide, as opposed to having headphones on explaining everything. It makes you a more educated audience member.”
Ja Minn Suhr saw the Russian National Ballet in 2006 and 2011 when it performed at Cal Poly.
“They’re wonderful,” Ja Minn Suhr wrote in an email, “and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ should be great, as well. Otherwise they could not have been invited for the third time in seven years.”
Ja Minn Suhr said the “Sleeping Beauty” performance is a perfect opportunity for the community to be “more exposed to the art of dance.”
“Dance is a lesser known area of art than music and other arts,” Ja Minn Suhr said. “Arts education not only promotes individual’s quality of life, but also it leads to richer society by educating our children, and in turn a creative, healthy and stronger society.”
Cal Poly DanceSport team president and business administration senior Amy Leung said dance is an important form of art.
“We have great dance shows on television, many dance clubs on campus and dance is everywhere around us in many different forms,” Leung said.
Leung said the best way to experience dance is through live performance.
“The experience is heightened when you see it live, right in front of your eyes,” Leung said. “It really takes you to a different place and to be able to get away and embody a character is what really makes it great.”
Ja Minn Suhr said there is a lot to see during the two-hour performance, but some of her favorite aspects of watching a ballet is watching the expression and relationships between the dancers, their individual characters and the music.
Friday’s show will be Lerian’s first time seeing “Sleeping Beauty,” and he said he is excited to see the fairy tale story come to life.
“Anytime there’s a prince and princess, what’s not to like?” he said.
Tickets are on sale at the box office. There will be a $10 student rush ticket sale at the door with their PolyCard. The performance starts at 8 p.m.