From 10 December 2007 through 1 January 2008 the Dutch National Ballet once again awakens The Sleeping Beauty with a kiss. Fifteen performances will take place at the Muziektheater. More than 115 years since its premiere in St Petersburg, this ballet, choreographed by Marius Petipa to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s sublime music, remains the crown jewel in the classical ballet repertoire. The work is unsurpassed in the demands that it makes upon - even twenty-first century – dancers, with its rich dance vocabulary requiring virtuosic and spectacular execution. The Sleeping Beauty is based on Charles Perrault’s well-known seventeenth-century fairytale La Belle au Bois Dormant. A princess – known as Aurora in the ballet – pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday, thus fulfilling the curse put on her by the wicked fairy Carabosse at her christening party. The Lilac Fairy, however, manages to avert Aurora’s death by putting her to sleep for a hundred years, until a prince awakens her with his kiss. The dazzling and lavish gold-tinted stage picture by the set and costume designer Philip Prowse imbues the piece with the grandeur it deserves.