Ratmansky to create new Sleeping Beauty for ABT

Posted on February 25, 2014

Alexei Ratmansky will choreograph a new production of The Sleeping Beauty for American Ballet Theatre [ABT] next year. The new production, which marks the company’s 75th anniversary, will be based on the production Léon Bakst created for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1921, The New York Times reports.

The new staging will have its premiere on March 3, 2015 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. Ratmansky, ABT’s choreographer in residence, said: “Tchaikovsky’s complex score and Petipa’s choreography represent the highest achievement of Russian classical art. It symbolises the harmony and magic of classical dance for me.”

Throughout his career, Ratmansky has shown an interest in both restoring and reinventing the past, creating newly-choreographed versions of older ballets such as The Bright Stream, stagings that use but reframe existing choreography, such as The Flames of Paris, and reconstructions of historic productions, such as Le Corsaire, staged with Yuri Burlaka. It’s not yet clear which approach he will favour with the new Beauty.

Picture: Bakst’s 1921 costume design for the King in The Sleeping Princess (as the Ballets Russe production was called). Dancing Times collection 

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.