Mein erstes Dornröschen

While Martin Schläpfer's choreography of the fairy tale in the large, full-length version danced by the Vienna State Ballet is on the program at the Vienna State Opera for everyone aged 10 and up, My First Sleeping Beauty is an ideal first encounter with the wonderful story for audiences aged 6 and up: danced by children and young people for children.

"It seems to me that the music of this ballet will be one of my best creations. The subject is so poetic, musically so grateful, that I was very enthusiastic while I was composing it," wrote Piotr I. Tchaikovsky, who was otherwise so often plagued by self-doubt, about his music for Sleeping Beauty. With its colorful orchestration, its rousing dances, its drama, but also its many subtle nuances and not least its subtle humor, it is still considered one of the composer's most important works and more: the perfect ideal of ballet music.

The premiere of Sleeping Beauty in January 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, choreographed by Marius Petipa and set to music by Piotr I. Tchaikovsky, is one of the highlights of dance history. However, the story of Princess Aurora and Prince Désiré can not only be brought to the stage as an opulent, full-length ballet characterized by numerous divertissements. Christiana Stefanou and the students of the Ballet Academy present it as an exciting dance fairy tale for children, in which Tchaikovsky's music is as captivating as the classical ballet is enchanting.

The Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera is considered the first address for ballet training in Austria. Following the efforts of Empress Maria Theresa and Jean Georges Noverre to establish a Viennese dance education in the 1770s, the school was institutionalized in 1870 with the opening of the Court Opera on the Ring.
Today, the academy offers students aged 8 to 18 from Austria and abroad a comprehensive stage dance education. Its graduates dance in many important companies worldwide.