Under construction: The creation of Lisa Macuja-Elizalde’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’

For a choreographer, the theater is an empty canvas that, given the right elements, can be transformed into any and every place and time. But the magic that the audience gets to watch when the curtains rise is the product of the vision that the choreographer imagined and projected upon the dancers and the technical crew to become a reality.

In this clip is a rare glimpse of prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde at the very early stages of creation of her version of The Sleeping Beauty. During the sometimes funny, sometimes chaotic, but always rewarding rehearsals, she is seen (and heard!) giving instructions to the dancers of Ballet Manila for a complex ballroom sequence that her creative mind has conjured.