Among the memorable moments in any production of this perennially audience - beloved ballet are those when, in Act I, Aurora must balance on pointe for as long as possible after being steadied by each of the suitor princes in turn.
      Last night Tamara Rojo brought the Royal Opera House to its feet by achieving the near-impossible of long, poised, beautiful balances, exquisite to see and a feat of remarkable balletic ability. Rojo is always a delight to watch, and as Aurora she is in her element: dainty, delicate, sweet, light as a thistle floating and twirling in the air, every gesture redolent of joy and the quintessence of femininity. She is a charismatic dancer; it is impossible not to look at her when she is on stage - she fixes and draws the eye with admiration, and seems to bask in the attention, playing to it with pleasure, luxuriating in it. She is one of those ballerinas who, even were she to lack the last refinements of technique, has such presence, such aching beauty of line and such perfect dancerly instincts, that everything she does amounts to genius.
      As Aurora last night Rojo was superb. From any audience’s point of view this Royal Ballet version of Sleeping Beauty has to be an audience’s ballet of ballets. It embodies and expresses the soul of ballet as the realm of dreams, purified romance, fairy tale, the far away and long ago of paradises where the lines between good and evil are simply drawn and good will always prevail after the minor inconveniences of evil have made room for a story. In such a ballet, the central role requires a ballerina who in herself is the dream, the fairy- tale, the paradisiacal princess who is radiance in motion, shaped by grace out of air, utterly credible as the girl who will be instantly beloved by a prince whom destiny has prepared for her. Tamara Rojo was born for just such a part.
      There is a split-second’s withholding in each of her gestures which makes them more graceful, more beautiful, than physical possibility should allow, a spatial syncopation that perfumes her movements, and makes each transition from one to the next a thing of necessity. This is a measure of her skill as an actress as well as her gifts as a dancer of supreme natural expressiveness. And because of this, one imagines that Petipa and Ashton must each have dreamed of a Rojo to be Aurora, so that the solos and pas de deux of this luxurious ballet could be made on her, needing exactly her configuration and talent to make it not merely dance but the very spirit of dance.
      After such an encomium it is hard to resist the thought that the many excellences of last night’s performance were in part the result of a lifting by Rojo’s immense example. The corps de ballet performed admirably, and the performances of the last act were a delight. Kenta Kura and Leanne Cope as Puss- in-Boots and the White Cat, and Laura Morera and Steven McRae as Princess Florine and the Bluebird, gave us the pleasure that these cameos are designed to give, as did all the episodes of the act. Johan Kobborg is a wonderfully neat dancer, and in the final act grand pas de deux and his solo interval during it displayed his talents with elan. The entire corps was at a high best; to say that Rojo shone like a meteor among them is a comment on what heights she reached against a background of such fine performance all round.
      This was a great night of ballet. It showed yet again, if showing were necessary, that in the whole universe of this supreme art, the Royal Ballet is one of the great companies, assuredly in the topmost three or four; and its being so is a testament to its attention to detail - design, costume, staging - and the sheer volume of talent it can rightly boast in the orchestra and company, and especially among its principals and soloists. Its performances attain the condition of art, as its magnificent Sleeping Beauty regularly shows; and last night’s perfect evocation sets that truth in stone.
AC Grayling