She hasn’t been kissed in a hundred years…

A scene from Ballet Arizona’s production of The Sleeping Beauty. (Photo by Tim Fuller)

Everyone knows Nutcracker, and everybody at least knows about Swan Lake.

But Tchaikovsky composed three full-length ballet scores and it’s the least-known, Sleeping Beauty, that many balletomanes count as his greatest.

“It’s less often done than the other Tchaikovsky ballets because of the number of people you have to put onstage,” says Maria Simonetti, rehearsal director for Ballet Arizona. Ballet Arizona’s production of Sleeping Beauty plays Feb. 11 -14, with Tchaikovsky’s music performed live by The Phoenix Symphony.

Simonetti’s job is to coordinate the activities of everyone involved in the mammoth production. She plans rehearsals for the 40 dancers, apprentices and trainees of Ballet Arizona, and if a dancer needs to be called out for a costume fitting or a press interview, Simonetti schedules it.

She doesn’t get much sleep doing her job for this ballet.

“We have 26 little children, 30 teenagers and 40 company dancers in Sleeping Beauty. Some of them have as many as five costume changes,” Simonetti says.

The story of Sleeping Beauty follows the famous fairytale, in which an envious witch puts a beautiful princess under a spell. The princess pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls into a deep sleep. Only “love’s true kiss” can awaken her – and that takes 100 years to arrive. The music was used as the basis for the score to Disney’s animated feature of the same name.

The 100-year wait poses a challenge for productions of Sleeeping Beauty, Simonetti says. Since a century has gone by when the princess awakes, all the costumes and wigs on the cast have to be different from the ones before.

Another part of Simonetti’s job is observing the rehearsals run by company artistic director Ib Andersen. She notes Andersen’s choreography and corrections, and helps ensure continuity in future rehearsals and performances. As she puts it:

“I work to make sure the dancers are moving the same feet, the same arms” from one time to the next.

A native of Buenos Aires, Simonetti was trained there at the fabled Teatro Colon and worked as ballet mistress for Chicago’s Hubbard Street Theatre before joining Ballet Arizona in 1997. In the year 2000, the company near extinction, Andersen came aboard as artistic director. Simonetti became his right hand in rebuilding Ballet Arizona into a viable company, and one of high artistic quality.

“I’ve been working for Ib for ten years now,” she says. “He’s a great artist to work for as well as a great boss.”

That the company can stage all three Tchaikovsky ballets in a single season – Swan Lake and Nutcracker came earlier in the year – is tribute to Andersen’s vision, the dancers’ talent, and to the persistent striving of Ballet Arizona’s board, staff and administration.