Review Roundup: American Ballet Theater's THE SLEEPING BEAUTY at the Metropolitan Opera House

American Ballet Theatre's 2015 season at the Metropolitan Opera House includes the New York Premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's all-new production of The Sleeping Beauty, a revival of Lar Lubovitch's Othello and repertory programs featuring historic works in celebration of the Company's 75th Anniversary Season.

Principal Dancers for the 2015 Metropolitan Opera House season include Roberto Bolle, Isabella Boylston, Herman Cornejo, Marcelo Gomes, David Hallberg, Paloma Herrera, Julie Kent, Gillian Murphy, Veronika Part, Xiomara Reyes,Polina Semionova, Hee Seo, Daniil Simkin, Cory Stearns,Diana Vishneva and James Whiteside. Guest Artists for the season include Semyon Chudin, principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, Maria Kochetkova, principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, Denys Nedak, soloist with the National Ballet of Ukraine, Marianela Nuñez, principal dancer with The Royal Ballet, Evgenia Obraztsova, principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, Natalia Osipova, principal dancer with The Royal Ballet and Olga Smirnova, leading soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

BroadwayWorld's Wesley Doucette: The noble grace of the dancers is undeniable; even their most pedestrian walk is performed with a structural confidence. Decked in royal garments and skyscraper headdresses, the regal king and queen, and especially Christine Shevchenko as the Lilac Faerie, wouldn't be out of place as statues in the gardens of Versailles. "The Sleeping Beauty" displays a rare world where those in power are vitalized by kindness and grace. Such a display of those in power as being wholly good often comes off as indoctrinating, but the world which ABT constructs convinces that these particular rulers represent the best of humanity.

ALASTAIR MACAULAY, NY Times: Its dances are an amazingly conscientious demonstration of Petipa's original intentions, and of the detail with which his steps can complement Tchaikovsky's music. Meanwhile, its designs, by Richard Hudson, are strongly inspired by Bakst's from 1921. Tchaikovsky, Petipa and their collaborators were honoring two centuries of the French baroque era; but here we're at times distracted by Bakst's modernism (as in the sharp, dark-green triangles of the Lombardy poplars in Act I). At other times, we're simply too aware of 1920s fashions (as in the prettily individual wigs of the six fairy godmothers in the Prologue).

Marina Harss, DanceTabs: Perhaps the most striking element in Alexei Ratmansky's new Sleeping Beautyfor American Ballet Theatre is its musicality, the way the steps, peppered with accents and breaths, unspool within the music. In most productions of Beauty, the tempi are constantly being adjusted to accommodate the size or difficulty of the steps - it takes longer to execute a big step than a small one. But here the style and spirit of Tchaikovsky's score finds its equal in the dancing; the resulting impression is one of harmoniousness and warmth.

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