Chaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty" in the original choreography by Petipa is considered the most important classical ballet ever. But what does that mean: original choreography?
Today there are only approximations and so Neumeier himself made the temporal distance between then and now the subject. So when Sleeping Beauty is kissed awake again after 100 years of sleep, it is not just two people who meet, but two epochs. This rendezvous allowed the choreographer to use Petipa's classical dance repertoire and yet set the story in the present: a distant present, however, as is so often the case with Neumeier, presented in fairy-tale imagery by Jürgen Rose.
