Charlotte Ballet premieres a new ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ It’s shorter and funnier.

You might take your elementary schooler to an uncut “Sleeping Beauty” as a first ballet experience. You could also have her sit through “Lawrence of Arabia” as her first movie, introduce her to music via Wagner’s “Tannhauser” and read her “King Lear” as a bedtime story.

Great as Tchaikovsky’s second full-length ballet is, he wrote three hours of music for it and meant it to have two – perhaps even three – intermissions. You can perform the whole “Nutcracker” twice in the same amount of time.

So choreographer Matthew Hart had a clever idea: Cut it to a little more than half its length, add a narrator in the form of a nurse for young Aurora, and keep as much of the music as possible while shaving off Tchaikovsky’s repeated passages? The result, “My First Sleeping Beauty,” premiered in 2012 at English National Ballet.

His friend Hope Muir, who danced with Hart in the ‘90s at Ballet Rambert in London, then had her own clever idea after becoming Charlotte Ballet’s artistic director: Why not invite Hart to revise it here and play the nurse herself?

That version will run March 13-22 at Knight Theater, where the show has been renamed “Sleeping Beauty: A Fairy-Tailored Classic.” Muir has such confidence in the concept that she has already hired Hart to create a fairy-tailored “Cinderella” in spring 2021.

Condensing a classic

First, though, he has to finish expanding the abbreviated “Beauty,” which will be longer here than in London. That means blending the classic steps Marius Petipa created for the Mariinsky Theatre in 1890 with footwork of Hart’s own and narration that keeps the story flowing while occasionally illuminating ballet conventions.

He’ll have more freedom here than at English National Ballet, both temporally and spatially. There he fit his vision into two half-hour acts for 14 young dancers with little professional experience. Here he’ll get half an hour more and about 30 dancers from Charlotte Ballet’s first and second companies and pre-professional group. Aurora’s birthday party, which had three guests in 2012, will look more like a court celebration.

“I had no one round the edges in the original,” says Hart. “Now I can bring eight couples to her wedding and get beautiful mini-tableaux. Also, the original production had a minimal design. Here we have elaborate sets and costumes (from Pacific Northwest Ballet), and it’s a challenge to fit my production into them. Some of the quick costume changes will be nightmares.”

Hart’s trying to get all the important action in “by making cuts that are pretty subtle. Tchaikovsky repeated himself a lot. So you can cut the mazurka from four minutes to two, cut the polonaise from four minutes to two, and still get in all the famous tunes and the moments people love.” Only in sections that don’t advance the plot at all – say, the Act II panorama, where the Lilac Fairy sails to Aurora’s thorn-covered castle with the intrepid prince – has he excised whole numbers.

A target audience that doesn’t know much about ballet history may not appreciate how British this “Beauty” will be.

Groan-worthy jokes

Hart, who danced at Royal Ballet in the ’90s, has stressed the integrated use of the whole body from head to feet, especially the port de bras tradition (French for “carriage of the arms”) that makes harmonious use of the upper body.

Says Hart, “You can do the whole step more easily when the port de bras is correct...But it’s not just about beautiful movement. I am passionate about old-fashioned storytelling. What do the steps mean? What are you telling the audience in this scene?”

He has filled the ballet with humor, borrowing comic ideas from the British pantomime tradition. That means groan-worthy jokes, double entendres that will go over the heads of youngsters, and broad comic bits. Aurora’s nurse, more of a straight narrator perched on a stool in the original, has become a buttinsky who enters the action.

“The original narrator (Jane Wymark) was an actress who had never danced, so I couldn’t move her around on specific counts. Hope was a dancer, so I can give her steps, make her more of a character. Not that the nosy, interfering nurse steals the show – well, maybe a little.”

Cinderella’s next

Hart credits his old friend with keeping track of him over the years, calling and sending holiday cards (“which I am terrible at”) and realizing that, though English National Ballet planned to do a series of “My First…” ballets, new management cut Hart’s connection after “Beauty.”

Charlotte Ballet’s fairy-tailored “Cinderella” next season gives him a chance to get back in that groove, trimming a full-length version he created for London City Ballet in the ’90s. That one used about 30 dancers, so the choreographic changes won’t be as radical.

“We’ll have to see whether ‘Cinderella’ needs a narrator,” he muses, perhaps envisioning a second mini-career for his old Rambert colleague. “It can’t be the fairy godmother, because she’s a major character. But it would be nice to continue this tradition….”

“Sleeping Beauty: A Fairy-Tailored Classic”

WHEN: March 13-22 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.

TICKETS: $25-$101.

DETAILS: 704-372-1000 or charlotteballet.org.

This story is part of an Observer underwriting project with the Thrive Campaign for the Arts, supporting arts journalism in Charlotte.

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This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 12:34 PM.