The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty is the supreme achievement of classical ballet — a vast, magnificent spectacle that represents the pinnacle of the collaboration between choreographer Marius Petipa and composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. At Princess Aurora's christening, the wicked fairy Carabosse casts a curse that will send her into an enchanted sleep on her sixteenth birthday, to be woken only by true love's kiss. The ballet unfolds across three opulent acts, offering a procession of character dances, fairy variations and one of the greatest grand pas de deux ever composed. It premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 15 January 1890.