Salt Lake City, Utah (The Daily Dish) — Ballet West is known for their incredible productions including their version of The Nutcracker. We spoke with Adam Sklute, the Ballet West Artistic Director, on their next production of Sleeping Beauty.

As we are coming up on opening weekend, Adam said, “Yeah, it’s so exciting. This production of Sleeping Beauty I retooled back around 2011, but this run that we are opening, first new sets, in 40 years. This is a brand new set and it is so dramatic, so colorful, and so multidimensional and there’s special effects galore. So it’s a really exciting production!”

Ballet West’s production of Sleeping Beauty gets an opulent makeover with the premiere of new sets designed by critically acclaimed French artist and painter Alan Vaes. In 2011, Ballet West Artistic Director, Adam Sklute, and Resident Designer, David Heuvel, reconceived the costumes. Now, Ballet West unveils the first new sets since its Ballet West premiere in 1986.

We wanted to know how does one go about putting a new set together and Adam added, “So you have the choreography, the steps, and where the dancers go on stage. You have to make sure that the set works with all of that, but then when I work with the designers, I say what if we have something more like this? Is it possible for this dancer to fly here? Is it possible for us to have a remote control boat float across the stage like this? Those are the things we put in just to make it all the more magical. It’s always about the specifics and this one is such a great story. Really fun for all ages.”

Ballet West‘s Sleeping Beauty will be performed at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City on February 10th though the 18th. Tickets start at just $29 and can be purchased at balletwest.org. Hope to see you there!

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