Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

I love the ballet. I love the sounds of pointe shoes thumping on the stage. I love the artistry and the strength of the women dancers. I know ballet is one of the least-feminist friendly sports going because of the physical toll on women's, and it's mostly women's, bodies. I know and agree with all of the feminist arguments against  ballet; from it's origins with its relationship to prostitution to the quite serious long-term health implications for dancers, particularly in relation to the fetishisation of eating disorders within the industry. Yet, I still love ballet. I know I shouldn't but it's one of those things I can't *quite* give up.

I've been taking my eldest daughter to the ballet for years. It's one of the best parts of living in this city: the sheer number of brilliant dance companies that tour here. Scottish Ballet's The Nutcracker and anything by Northern Ballet Company remain my favourites. Recently, I took my daughter to see Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance. It's the first production I've seen by the company and I have to say I found it really quite disturbing. The story of Sleeping Beauty is the story of sexualised violence and the control of women's bodies. I've just not seen it performed in quite so blatant a manner without any attempt to deconstruct the myths. 

There is so much wrong with this version that it's hard to know where to start. It still uses the modern telling of the myths of "Patriarchal Love" but rather felt like Twilight with tutus.  The "evil fairy" dies quickly after cursing the princess Aurora so it is her son who makes the curse come true by pricking her finger. Aurora is not awoken by a kiss from a stranger but rather by the gardner she'd been fooling around with before pricking her finger. He lives for a 100 years because the good male fairy bites him and turns the gardner into another fairy. The erotic connotations of that "kiss" go unremarked. The son of the evil fairy guards Aurora's body for a 100 years desperately kissing her to bring her back to life now that he has decided he wants to fuck her. There is a rather lot of rolling about on the stage between the son and the unconscious body of Aurora. In the original fairy tale, Aurora is awoken by the twins she conceived after being rape whilst unconscious by the king. I don't know if Bourne was actively trying to reference that version but the implications of rape were very obvious. After a 100 years the son tricks the gardner into waking Aurora and then the son tries to ritually sacrifice her. She is saved

by the gardner/ new fairy whilst the other fairies kill the son. Then, Aurora gives birth to a half baby/ half angel.

I don't expect much from productions of Sleeping Beauty. There is no way to reclaim the story from its original construction of rape but I have never seen a version so utterly problematic before. I'm actually surprised their was no trigger warning or child-viewing warning to the production. The dancing was beautiful but the story Bourne chose to show wasn't.