Ross MacGibbon | Matthew Bourne | 2013 | UK | 105’

Matthew Bourne’s smash-hit production, Sleeping Beauty, was filmed at the Bristol Hippodrome in 2013 following a sell-out UK tour. The story begins in 1890, the year of the ballet’s first performance, at the christening of the heroine Princess Aurora. It was the Fin-de-Siecle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination. As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forward 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!