Is it a Petipa dance we are watching?

To answer this question, I focus on dance movement style in one particular Petipa ballet; but in doing so, I seek to go further and to raise a more fundamental issue, namely, how we should distinguish between classroom technique and art? Petipa dances present a specific example of the problem that arises when choreographers draw on the classroom lexicon, or danse d'école, as a basis for their choreography – leading dancers and rehearsal directors to conflate the values of the classroom with those of the dance. Using a dance from The Sleeping Beauty (1890) as a framework, I explore the issue of dance art and the question of what, if anything, links performance of classroom technique with performance of the art work? 1