Lyndsae Vine
General McArthur Hambrick
Assignment #3
1 March 2015
The Sleeping Beauty: Petipa vs. Fokine
Petipa prepared The Sleeping Beauty for the composer Tchaikovsky; his plan was to portray dramatic actions not only geared toward the character but also to the timing and rhythm of the dances as well. Hence the style of Petipa was definitely classical and ultimately followed the formal rules to ballet.
Fokine on the other hand was more rebellious against the traditional conventions of his time, as he emphasized the beauty of the human body in poses not relevant to the style of ballet at the time; he strongly supported a complete unity of expression, rather than the traditional way performers expressed meaning through movements accompanied by music. However, Fokine thought that tradition has its place. Fokine believed that the whole body of the dancer should reflect the character and their emotions along with the story line, and not limited to just music.
This style of Fokine’s implies traditional ballet does not accurately reflect reality, and hence created contemporary ballet. Furthermore, he believed that dance should be a truly expressive and not mere body movements, and that the type of movement, music and design should reflect the time and place of the subject.
Petipa, in contrast to Fokine, emphasized dance as technically virtuous as opposed to
Fokine’s style of technical depth. Furthermore, Petipa followed formal, classical rules to dance, in contrast to Fokine’s style of inventive freedom in romanticism. Pepita featured the female
ballerina and the male carrying her around, and emphasized aristocratic style for the upper class spectators. Both Petipa and Fokine emphasized the importance of the dancer’s gestures and how it reflects not only the character but also the timing and rhythm of the dance itself. Symbolism was more explicit in Petipa’s choreography as there was dialogue, making the plot was more apparent to the audience. The traditional methods utilized by Petipa allowed the audience to witness the psychological feeling through movement and hence left it up to the audience as to whether or not such movements are expressive or not. Fokine, although not traditional, emphasized the importance of movement and poses, however expressiveness of such actions were relatively
