Nicolai Serguéeff and the Sleeping Beauty

Tracing the legacy of the man who preserved The Sleeping Beauty’s choreography, through the classic ballet’s evolution from the nineteenth century to the present

Nicolai Serguéeff and “The Sleeping Beauty” explores the legacy of a former Russian imperial rehearsal director who fled postrevolutionary Russia with the most complete choreographic records of Marius Petipa’s ballet masterpiece, set to music by Tchaikovsky and first performed in the late nineteenth century. This book traces the impact of this act of preservation on more than a century of Sleeping Beauty productions, examining the resilience of the ballet even as artists have adapted and reinterpreted its traditions to suit changing circumstances.

Nicolai Serguéeff’s scores, written in Stepanov notation, became a key resource for staging the ballet around the world. In this book, Maureen Gupta explores five landmark productions of The Sleeping Beauty: productions staged in London by Serguéeff for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1921), Ninette de Valois’s Vic-Wells Ballet (1939), and Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet (1948); and two recent historical reconstructions using Serguéeff’s notations directed by Sergei Vikharev for the Mariinsky/Kirov Ballet (1999) and by Alexei Ratmansky for American Ballet Theatre/La Scala (2015).

Through extensive archival research, Gupta provides insight into the nineteenth-century Russian ballet while also highlighting its living tradition and continued relevance. This book demonstrates how The Sleeping Beauty has evolved while maintaining its classical core, resulting in an essential case study for dancers, historians, and choreographers. It combines dance history, musicology, and performance studies to show how a ballet can be both timeless and ever-changing.