The familiar story of The Sleeping Beauty has medieval roots but was popularized in 1697 with the publication of Charles Perrault’s La Belle au bois dormant, one in a collection of fairy tales with simple, often moralistic plots. The Sleeping Beauty tells of a young princess cursed to sleep for 100 years until her true love awakens her with a kiss. Beyond this, the action is mainly symbolic, with characters representing values and ideas in a world divided into good and evil. 

Rudolf Nureyev’s magnificent staging of The Sleeping Beauty for The National Ballet of Canada is based on the 1890 original by Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and it makes the most of Perrault’s tale, using it as the basis for some of classical ballet’s most beautiful and demanding choreography. The Prologue especially delights in its symbolism, with a host of fairies arriving to bestow gifts of character on the baby Aurora, whose name heralds a new dawn for the kingdom she will one day represent.

Tchaikovsky’s score identifies the fairies according to their gifts, though these vary slightly across productions today. In Nureyev’s version, the fairies represent inner strengths that will benefit Aurora not only in her role as future monarch but also as a member of a civilized society. In this, the ballet ascribes value to Aurora’s person, not her appearance, giving the concept of “beauty” a welcome and modern inflection.