Product Details

• Actors: Alla Sizova, Yuri Solovyov
• Format: Classical, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Kultur Video
• VHS Release Date: August 15, 1991
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301816196
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,407 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timeless Classic, January 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This video is a superb example of true Russian/Soviet trained dancers combined with Soviet style of "cultural propaganda". The film (created in 1964) was made to be shown in the movie theaters to bring more art to the masses (let's not forget that the arts were on very high level in former Soviet Union and still are in the present-day Russia). This movie-version style should explain somewhat choppy cinematography. On the other hand, it's is a classic that should be owned by all avid ballet lovers as well as by those who are just remotely interested in ballet. It is a great family movie!
The dancers in the main roles were the stars of the Kirov Ballet in the 60's and 70's. How can one go wrong in owning a tape with such stars in their prime as Alla Sizova, Yuri Soloviev, Natalia Dudinskaya, Natalia Makarova, Valeri Panov among many others? To any ballet student this should be a historic recording of what true classical training can produce. It's a pure academy of dance! For someone to say that the dancers are out of shape, because they might seem a little more meatier than our present-day concept of bones, is absurd! After all, it's the muscle that gets you up into the air -- not bones.
Alla Sizova was a lyrical dancer with pure classical style training and faultless technique. She received gold medal at Varna competition in 1964, and it's safe to assume that this ballet was filmed shortly after that. She was very popular in England when Kirov Ballet toured there. Unfortunately, she had a back injury and wasn't able to dance for 2 years, but she came back to dance and tour with Kirov in England and Europe without any loss of her brilliant technique. Presently, I believe, she is teaching in Washington D.C.
Yuri Soloviev was one of the most talented dancers that Russian and world ballet ever had. His technique was impeccable, his jumps absolutely breathtaking and....his life was extinquished much too soon for us to enjoy his talent. If for nothing else, one should have this tape to remember Soloviev's extraordinary talent.
Moreover, this film captured very young Natalia Makarova in the role of Princess Florina.
I hope this insight is somewhat helpful.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb Sizova and Soloviev, March 31, 2003

By 

Alastair Macaulay (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

If you know "Sleeping Beauty", the reason to have this "Beauty" is the superlative dancing by Sizova and Soloviev. Nobody dances like them any more, and it's our loss. Sizova dances with a spontaneity and musical emphasis unlike any other Kirov dancer I've ever seen. Her Aurora was a vital part of the Kirov's first sensational tours of the West in the 1960s; curiously, I saw her dance Princess Florine at the Kirov in Act III in 1984, and even then she was dancing with amazing freshness - alas, by that point, a freshness unlike anyone in the company. Even though Soloviev isn't really a prince (he was a very famous Bluebird), he becomes a hero like no other - utterly innocent and caught up in the story as if for the first time. Latterday Kirov or Western dancers would dance this ballet with more attention to minor technical perfection and with less feeling for dance and music and character. To watch how Sizova's torso is always alive through each dance is glorious, and the way that Soloviev effortlessly phrases his series of double tours en l'air like a continuous outpouring of one single ardent thought (whereas most dancers present them like one technical cliche after another) is thrilling even if you've seen this ballet more than two hundred times in the theatre. When I first saw this film in the early 1980s, the Kirov was seldom seen in Britain or America, and it was one kind of revelation. It doesn't, however, represent how the Kirov's production worked in the theatre, it has a partly bad text (Carabosse danced on pointe and acted heavily by Natalia Dudinskaya), and it's heavily cut. Now that I've seen the Kirov and its various "Beauty" productions many times, this film is a different kind of revelation: what the Kirov was like before it became congealed by academicism. Makarova is the best of a mainly good supporting company; if you know your Kirov "Beauty"s, most of the dances here are alive as they aren't in later Kirov videos. But Sizova and Soloviev are the great reason to have this tape.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kirov Sleeping Beauty (1964), March 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Sizova and Soloviev, as well as Valery Panov as the Bluebird are wonderful. It's definitely worth buying, but many of the most famous dances have been shortened considerably in this video.