Bourne Premieres Sleeping Beauty at Sadler’s, Christmas 2012

At a press conference held today, Sadler’s Wells chief executive Alistair Spalding hailed Bourne as “Britain’s most popular choreographer”, adding “no one has brought dance to the public like Matthew.”

Sleeping Beauty will complete the 51-year-old’s interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s three ballets; his productions of Nutcracker! and Swan Lake (which famously featured an all-male corps de ballet) were both multi award-winners and big box office hits.

Bourne revealed today that Sleeping Beauty is still in the early stages of development, but will feature “gothic” influences and be set in the Victorian/Edwardian period and in the present day.

“Perrault’s timeless fairy tale, about a young girl cursed to sleep for one hundred years, was turned into a legendary ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer, Marius Petipa, in 1890” he said. “I have taken this as a starting point, setting the Christening of Aurora, the story’s heroine, in the year of the ballet’s first performance; the height of the Fin-de-Siecle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination.”

“As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forwards in time to the more rigid, uptight Edwardian era; a mythical golden age of long Summer afternoons, croquet on the lawn and new dance crazes. Years later, awakening from her century long slumber, Aurora finds herself in the modern day; a world more mysterious and wonderful than any Fairy story.”

The production will premiere over Christmas 2012, culminating a year that begins with Nutcracker! and will also see revivals of his early hits Spitfire (1988), The Infernal Galop (1989) and Town and Country (1991), which will be staged from 21 to 26 May under the banner Early Adventures.

The Olivier Award-winning Play Without Words, which premiered at the National Theatre in 2002, will receive its first major revival with a four-month run in July.

Pet Shop Boys, BalletBoyz and Kneehigh

Next year will also see returns to Sadler’s Wells for a few favourites from the past season, including BalletBoyz and the Pet Shop Boys/Javier De Frutos ballet The Most Incredible Thing.

BalletBoyz, comprising former Royal Ballet lead dancers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, return with their mixed programme of three works which premiered earlier this year, on 3 & 4 March 2012.

The Most Incredible Thing, which premiered back in March, will return for a longer season from 25 March to 7 April 2012. The full-length ballet is adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1870 story of the same name, which tells the story of a contest to find ‘the most incredible thing’ in order to win the hand of a princess.

Other highlights of the spring/summer season include a season of international co-productions dedicated to the late Pina Bausch, which runs from 6 June to 9 July as part of the London 2012 Festival. And Akram Khan‘s solo work DESH, inspired by his homeland of Bangladesh, returns in February following its run earlier this year.

Elsewhere, a new musical in which “East London meets Bollywood” will premiere at the Peacock Theatre, marking the first collaboration between Sadler’s Wells, Stratford East and Kneehigh. Written by Tanika Gupta and directed by Kneehigh’s Emma Rice, Wah! Wah! Girls is inspired by the song and dance of traditional Mujra dancers and runs from 24 May to 23 June 2012.