The tour will begin performances at Plymouth's Theatre Royal Oct. 17, prior to an extensive U.K tour that will include an eight-week season at London's Sadler's Wells, beginning performances Dec. 1 prior to an official opening Dec. 9, for a run through Jan. 24. There are also plans for it to tour to Italy, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and Singapore in 2016.
The production, originally created for New Adventures 25th birthday celebrations, completed Bourne's trio of re-imagined Tchaikovsky ballet masterworks that started in 1992 with Nutcracker! and included the international hit Swan Lake that followed in 1995. The production is designed by Lez Brotherston, with lighting by Paule Constable and sound by Paul Groothuis.
In a press statement, Bourne commented, "The unprecedented success of New Adventures Sleeping Beauty took us all by surprise in 2012, becoming our most popular production, uniformly selling out on its first UK tour and reaching 98 percent box office for its eight-week season at Sadler’s Wells before it had even opened! For me, it is one of New Adventures' finest achievements and the piece of which I am personally most proud. It also celebrates 20 years of working with my brilliant colleague, Lez Brotherston, who was rightly nominated for an Olivier Award for his glorious work on this production. I’m delighted that New Adventures will be waking up the Princess Aurora after only three years — 100 years seemed just too long to wait!"
Perrault’s timeless fairy tale, about a young girl cursed to sleep for 100 years, was turned into a legendary ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer, Marius Petipa, in 1890. Bourne takes this date as his starting point, setting the Christening of Aurora, the story’s heroine, in the year of the ballet’s first performance; the height of the Fin-de-Siecle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination. As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forward in time to the more rigid, uptight Edwardian era; a mythical golden age of long Summer afternoons, croquet on the lawn and new dance crazes. Years later, awakening from her century long slumber, Aurora finds herself in the modern day; a world more mysterious than any Fairy story.
For full touring dates, visit http://new-adventures.net/sleeping-beauty/tour-dates
