MATTHEW BOURNE’S – SLEEPING BEAUTY
Matthew Bourne’s production of this famous fairytale sees the choreographer return to the music of Tchaikovsky to complete the trio of the composer’s ballet masterworks that started in 1992 with Nutcracker! and, most famously, in 1995, with the international hit Swan Lake.
Perrault’s timeless fairy tale, about a young girl cursed to sleep for one hundred years, was turned into a legendary ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer, Marius Petipa, in 1890. Bourne takes this date as his starting point, setting the Christening of Aurora, the story’s heroine, in the year of the ballet’s first performance; the height of the Fin-de-Siecle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination.
As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forwards in time to the more rigid, uptight Edwardian era; a mythical golden age of long Summer afternoons, croquet on the lawn and new dance crazes. Years later, awakening from her century long slumber, Aurora finds herself in the modern day; a world more mysterious and wonderful than any Fairy story!
Matthew Bourne’s new scenario introduces several characters not seen in Petipa’s famous Ballet or Grimm’s fairy tale. The Royal Family is headed by King Benedict and Queen Eleanor. Princess Aurora’s romantic interest is not a Prince, but the royal gamekeeper, Leo. Representing the central forces of good and evil are Count Lilac (“the King of the Fairies”) and the Dark Fairy Carabosse.
Matthew Bourne’s haunting new scenario is a gothic tale for all ages; the traditional tale of good vs. evil and rebirth is turned upside-down, creating a supernatural love story, across the decades, that even the passage of time itself cannot hinder.
www.new-adventures.net/productions/sleeping_beauty
Tour Dates
New Victoria Theatre, Woking
Tuesday 19 – Saturday 23 March
Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe
Tuesday 25 February – Saturday 2 March
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Tuesday 5 – Saturday 9 March
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Tuesday 12 – Saturday 16 March
Alhambra Theatre, Bradford
Tuesday 26 – Saturday 30 March
Nottingham Theatre Royal
Tuesday 2 – Saturday 6 April
Theatre Royal, Newcastle
Tuesday 16 – Saturday 20 April
New Wimbledon Theatre
Tuesday 23 – Saturday 27 April
Liverpool Empire
Tuesday 30 April – Saturday 4 May
Bristol Hippodrome
Tuesday 7 – Saturday 11 May
Marlowe, Canterbury
Tuesday 14 – Saturday 18 May
Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
Tuesday 21 – Saturday 25 May 3