9-12.

Bermuda had its first opportunity to see a professional company dance in a full-length classical ballet last week when The New Jersey Ballet Company presented `The Sleeping Beauty' at City Hall.

It was worth the long wait and even purists who tend to take large opera houses and full orchestras for granted would have to admit that this delightful production, quite lavishly costumed, captures the allure and sense of momentum that builds in a ballet conceived on this grand scale.

Once again, we have the Bermuda Ballet Association to thank for filling in this missing link in the Island's dance history. Over the past 30 years they have brought some of the top companies from Europe and North America to Bermuda.

When The New Jersey Ballet recently staged its full-length `Beauty' it also arranged a parallel production for 18 dancers to be used in smaller venues and it is this version which was brought here.

While the stage of the City Hall Theatre is still woefully inadequate, the production was at least feasible and, as it turned out, provided a classical-thirsty audience with an evening of fine dance.

Covent Garden of course, it was not (how could it be, with `canned' music? but Tchaikovsky wove his incomparable spell all the same. There was still that rush of expectation as the curtain rose on, yes, a real stage set, with the baby princess's cradle poised in splendid isolation within the royal palace.

Not for long though, for this was the Christening Day and, in traditional fashion, the King and Queen, courtiers and an array of tutu'd fairy godmothers arrived for the celebrations.

In staging this ballet, former American Ballet Theatre ballerina Eleanor D'Antuono has carefully conserved the set pieces and classical mime that survive from Petipa's choreography for the original St. Petersburg production in 1890. As such, this ballet, which with `Swan Lake' celebrates the great partnership between Petipa and Tchaikovsky, belongs to an era when the Tsarist audiences went along to the ballet strictly for the spectacle and to cheer on their favourite dancers.

`The Sleeping Beauty', which tells the age-old story of the princess who pricks her finger and falls asleep for one hundred years to be awoken by a Prince's kiss is the stuff of pure fairytale. The christening, her 16th birthday party and eventual wedding all provide plenty of excuses to dance, so in this context the end result is not perhaps so very different from today's purely plotless ballets, where the dance is the thing.

The corps de ballet of this company are well trained as they soon revealed in the Act I Garland Waltz. Unfortunately, the size of the stage seriously detracts from the pattern effect of these big set pieces.

One of the pleasant surprises of the night was the excellence of the young Pages, all local students, and excellently trained to take their places among the professionals by Mary Faullkenberry and Coral Waddell. The latter also took on the role of the Queen, and was partnered by American guest artist Eric Gustafson as the King.

The high moment of drama occurs in the Prologue when the evil fairy, Carabosse, furious at not being invited, turns up anyway in flashes of thunder and smoke, to predict that the Princess Aurora will prick her finger and die.

The dances of the Crystal Fountain, the Enchanted Garden, Songbirds, Woodland Glade and the Golden Vine fairies, are all created to show the versatile balletic qualities of the various dancers as they arrive to present gifts to the young princess. They were led by the Lilac Fairy, a key role in this ballet as it is she who countermands the curse of Carabosse by promising that the princess will not die, but fall into a deep sleep.

On opening night, this role was danced with quiet grace by Jennifer Banks, a dancer whose classic distinction was immediately apparent in the purity of her arabesques and nicely placed pirouettes.

With three changes of cast for the four-night engagement, it fell to Lori Christman, a leggy and radiant dancer, to take on the role of the Princess Aurora on opening night.

Of all the great classical roles, Aurora is perhaps the most terrifying for the dancer: for starters, there is the famous Rose Adagio where she has to dance with four princely suitors. The show-stopping element lies in the fact that she spends much of the time balanced and promenaded on one pointe as she accepts the hand of each prince in turn; add to that the business of clinging on to the proffered flowers, each of which is seized en pirouette , and it becomes easy to see why this sequence is not for the faint-hearted. Christman, who has beautifully strong pointes and a regally clean line, came through triumphant, and even though her balancing hand showed strain, she smiled happily throughout.

She was partnered by Timour Bourtasenkov, a dancer from Moldova who brings that glorious Russian classicism to every movement. His strength lay in beautifully fast turns and high jumps, all of which were finished with almost nonchalant neatness. His wedding pas de deux with Christman was undoubtedly the high point of the evening, and danced with real grandeur, apart from two slightly worrying moments when it looked as if he was going to miss her in the climactic fish dives. He didn't, but it was a near thing. The Awakening, really the pivotal moment of the whole ballet, could have had more drama about it, the kiss itself being matter-of-fact rather than the great romantic denouement of the ballet.

There was some splendid dancing in the diverissements for Aurora's Wedding, notably the Puss-in-Boots pas de deux, danced with feline insouciance by Mia Munroe and Johan Renvall who is a principal with American Ballet Theatre.

One of the best loved pas de deux is that of the `Bluebird' and here were superb performances from the gifted Israeli dancer, Elie Lazar, and Rosemary Sabovick-Bleich, both of whom made such indelible impressions on their last visit here three years ago.

All in all, a rare treat for ballet fans, and surely a splendid introduction for those who were seeing the incomparable collaboration of Petipa and Tchaikovsky for the very first time.

PATRICIA CALNAN SLEEPING BEAUTY -- Dancers from the New Jersey Ballet Company perform a scene from their production of `The Sleeping Beauty', presented by the Bermuda Ballet Association at City Hall last week.