On Saturday afternoons, Alexandra MacDonald performs one of the most difficult movements in classical ballet – the Rose Adagio.
“The adage of the rose is iconic,” MacDonald said, speaking weeks before her performance of Princess Aurora in the National Ballet of Canada’s 2018 production. Sleeping Beauty.
The technically demanding move comes in the first act of Aurora’s birthday party, when the princess dances with four suitors, each offering her a rose. There are four balances – fiercely difficult – where the ballerina is cutting edge, the other leg bent waist-high behind her, briefly freeing her suitor’s supporting arm.
Each balance does not last more than about a second, but they require maximum strength and endurance.
Fiercely difficult balances
Ballerinas are also judged for their ability to transcend physical demands by imparting grace, balance and stability. Add to that the ability to express the qualities of an innocent young girl experiencing romance for the first time, and there’s a reason audiences invariably burst into applause during the Rose Adagio.
MacDonald can’t remember a time when she didn’t know the Adagio of the Rose – she thinks she may have first encountered it in a book as a child growing up in Calgary.
“I feel like I’ve always been aware of that,” MacDonald says. To date, she has watched onstage several times, standing on the sidelines as other Auroras before her have taken center stage.
“And each time, I’ve had so much fun watching principles play it, and everyone has their own interpretation of their shyness, their self-confidence. And each principal dancer decides when those moments happen – it’s not is not choreographed.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEcHymtIj_0
the Sleeping Beauty ballet itself, an 1890 collaboration between the father of classical ballet Marius Petipa and composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is a test of the classical courage of the entire company.
Legendary Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev presented his version of the ballet to the National Ballet of Canada, putting the Canadian troupe on the international ballet map. Karen Kain made her own leap to ballet stardom playing the role of Aurora with Nureyev as the prince.
In 1973, The New York Times praised Kain’s rendition of the Rose Adagio, saying that while all the other Auroras in the company performed it as well as 22-year-old Kain, “the Toronto company has an exceptional talent pool for the future.”
The ballet is only performed once every four years, and Kain was determined to make MacDonald one of seven ballerinas to perform Aurora in 2018.
MacDonald’s turn comes in a matinee performance towards the end of the race.
Kain says she made the decision while watching MacDonald in The Nutcracker last Christmas.
“She has all the qualities of Aurora,” Kain said. “When I saw her doing Frozen, I saw that luminescence, plus she’s very beautiful — I don’t want to embarrass her,” Kain smiled, lowering his voice.
Equally popular is MacDonald’s magnificent jump. “You have to jump like a gazelle,” Kain said. “There are a lot of qualities you need in Aurora but if you can’t jump it’s not for you.”
The challenges keep coming
MacDonald learned the news in Kain’s office at the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts on Queen Street. “I’m so thrilled and happy,” MacDonald said. “It’s also terrifying and nerve-wracking.”
That day, when she learned that in a few months she would be dancing Aurora, MacDonald remembers looking down at her hands, surprised to see them shaking.
The Rose Adagio, the athletic pinnacle of ballet, comes early in ballet, so dancers must learn to pace themselves as the challenges keep coming. The ethereal second act in which Aurora appears to the prince as a vision is deceptively simple but demands enormous control, Kain said, while the third act with its wedding scene involves “lots of leaps and turns.”
The wedding scene is one of MacDonald’s favorites, especially the pas de deux she dances with the prince – at this time the shy and insecure daughter of the Rose Adagio turns into a confident young woman.
“I really like this solo,” MacDonald said. “It’s regal and majestic. I love ending the ballet this way. The first act is bubbly and lively, the middle act is dreamy. And the third act – you’re married, you’re confident, so happy, and in this particular solo, I love being able to embody those things.”
What the audience can’t see is that by then MacDonald’s legs will be shaking with exhaustion.
Kain vividly remembers what it was like to achieve marriage solo.
“Just the amount of fatigue you have – it’s so grounded. And it makes you feel so much calmer and better when you get to that solo. It’s beautifully constructed, that ballet, in terms of how the choreography represents the parts of Aurora’s life. That’s what we admire about it. And that’s why it’s a ballet that still exists – there are so many challenges for the artists who compose it.
In casting MacDonald as Aurora, Kain may also have seen something of a younger self in the 23-year-old MacDonald.
Kain laughs with delight when MacDonald tells him that the company’s costume mistress outfitted the young dancer with the same ornate tutu Kain wore as Aurora.
“I am honored!” Kain laughs. “It shows how much care we take with our costumes at the National. This tutu is from 1972!”
Sleeping Beauty continues at the Four Seasons Center for Performing Arts through Sunday, March 18.
