Sleeping Beauty - Lilac Fairy Variation (Gillot)

Sleeping Beauty or Спящая красавица is a ballet created by Marius Petipa to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is based on Charles Perault’s story La Belle a bois dormant. In it, the princess Aurora is cursed by the evil Carabosse, that she would, for her sixteenth birthday prick her finger on a spindle of a spinning wheel and die. However the diagonal opposite of Carabosse, the Lilac Fairy, counteracts the curse, by doing it, so the princess will merely fall asleep for a hundred years until she will be awakened by true love’s kiss. And true to the story, a hundred years later, the Lilac Fairy leads the gloomy Prince Florimund (or Désirée) to Aurora, where he kisses her and she awakens. They wed and live happily ever after. In this part of the ballet, in the prologue, every fairy grants a special gift to the child, with the Lilac Fairy coming last to the celebration and also doing the last variation, in it showing the ultimate balance, strength, and grace that a ballerina can show. And Beatrice Maure