Eilis Small News Today

Is there anything similar to The Sleeping Beauty overture? With Tchaikovsky filling the theatre with full-blown fairy tale drama - it's quite the opener.

It's 40 years since Sir Peter Wright's production of The Sleeping Beauty for the Birmingham Royal Ballet first appeared. Faithful to the original Petipa choreography, he was influenced, too, by later productions – Diaghilev's Ballets Russes version, for instance, and Nikolai Sergeiev's staging for the Vic-Wells (later Royal) Ballet. So, BRB's current production at Sadler's Wells offers a pedigree that goes back to the very heart of Russian classical ballet – an...