Alexei Ratmansky Is Taking on "Sleeping Beauty"

November 28, 2001

Sometimes it seems like Alexei Ratmansky is remaking the classical canon, one ballet at a time. He restaged Le Corsaire and Flames of Paris back when he was director of the Bolshoi. Dutch National Ballet premiered his take on Don Quixote in 2010. He gave The National Ballet of Canada a new Romeo and Juliet in 2011. He took a risk with his unconventional Firebird for American Ballet Theatre in 2012. And ABT has made his delightful Nutcracker an annual New York tradition.

Now ABT is getting yet another big Ratmansky revision. His all-new Sleeping Beauty will premiere next March in California before making its New York debut during ABT’s 2015 Metropolitan Opera House season. We can kiss the candy-colored setting of ABT’s current Beauty production goodbye, too: The new ballet will feature scenery and costumes by Richard Hudson (who also did Ratmansky’s Nutcracker), inspired by Léon Bakst’s 1921 designs for the Ballets Russes Sleeping Beauty.

As always, we’ll let you know more as we hear it!