Sleeping Beauty
Ballet by Mats Ek, music by Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), première: 2 June 1996, Hamburg Ballet
Duration 2 H. 20 Min. incl. intermission after 1st act after approx. 55 Min. Introduction 45 min before the performance.
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Sleeping Beauty
Abstract
Sleeping Beauty
Swedish choreographer Mats Ek regularly causes a sensation with his exciting new interpretations of famous classical ballets. When, in 1996, he took on that most sugary ballet of the tsarist Romantic period, Sleeping Beauty, he also updated the action. Ek’s Aurora is not a sheltered princess, but a rebellious teenager who does not feel at ease in her parent’s house and flees into a world of superficial appearances. Through the wicked Carabosse she comes into contact with drugs, until she awakes from this world of illusion and begins to become an adult. Mats Ek radically dusts down the Tchaikovsky classic. Without losing the reference to the original, he replaces Petipa’s technical showstoppers with narrative dance that is subtly in harmony with the characters and extremely humorous. In quest of new forms, he leads the audience into an unknown world of seeing and experience, making possible a new and refreshing perspective on an apparently well-known fairy tale.