Debut performance

There are many nice fairy tales, but could it be that »Dornröschen« (»Sleeping Beauty«) is the nicest of all? A young girl has a spell cast on her by an evil fairy, but thanks to a good fairy, disaster is averted just in time. A young man, a prince by trade, is not afraid and fights through the thorns to Sleeping Beauty and wakes her with a kiss. The power of love is great, never give up, good wins out over evil, and out of thorns come red roses.

Werner Stiefel created his new children’s programme based on themes from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale »Sleeping Beauty«. With text, music, dance and performance, it’s an original interdisciplinary production. The performance begins in the present and becomes more and more fairy-tale-like until you can hardly make the distinction between fairy tale and modern times.

Werner Stiefel, born in Malchin/Mecklenburg in 1954, was employed with the ballet of the Leipzig opera from 1972-1990. From 1983 on he danced as the first soloist in great classical parts like the princes in Tchaikovsky’s »Sleeping Beauty« and »Swan Lake«. From 1990-96 he was a member of the dance theatre at the Schauspiel Leipzig. Since then he has worked here in the public relations department. Since 1985 Werner Stiefel has done choreographic work on his own and created numerous independent projects with which he has also given guest performances in many other cities. Above all, his children’s programmes are very successful and occasionally performed over 100 times in school concerts throughout the city of Leipzig, as was the case with »Schneewittchen and die 10 x 7 Zwerge« (»Snow White and the 10 x 7 Dwarves«) (1996) and »Streitesel« (»Squabbler«) (2000). »Hinter der Dornenhecke« (»Behind the Thorn Bushes«) is Stiefel’s sixth children’s programme.