The First State Ballet Theatre revisits a longstanding audience favorite this weekend.
Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty takes the stage in Copeland Hall at The Grand in Wilmington this Saturday and Sunday.
Marketing Manager Claire McGregor says First State Ballet’s professional dancers may be very familiar with The Sleeping Beauty, but each production requires meticulous preparation.
“For the more experienced dancers it’s a matter of really getting into character and fine-tuning the detail of every gesture and telling the story. For the younger dancers, and there are some students in the production as well, it’s exciting to be a part of it for the first time and mastering the steps. It’s years-long and the past few weeks certainly have been very intense.”
This year’s production will be danced by First State Ballet’s company of 21 professional artists and students from its school in the children’s roles.
The company’s Director of Advancement Joan Beatson says their dancers include international professionals that live, work and dance right here in Delaware.
“We do have dancers from all over. We have dancers from Mexico, Dominican Republic and Japan, and they’ve all come here to dance at First State Ballet, and it’s a wonderful melding of different backgrounds and everyone comes together to make something beautiful. There’s a common language in ballet. ”
Performances of The Sleeping Beauty are scheduled for this Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 2pm
The company is accepting toy drive donations at each performance to benefit families at Ronald McDonald House in Wilmington.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
