Ballet of Lights Johannesburg arrives as a glowing experience with a different format, featuring classical movement, illuminated costumes and a contemporary visual style. As the performance begins, professional dancers plié, pirouette and développé, telling the stories of timeless fairytales like The Sleeping Beauty. Over the course of 60 minutes, the stage changes tone, mood and light, making space for ballet newcomers, families and seasoned attendees alike.
Ballet of Lights in Johannesburg: What’s on?
The Sleeping Beauty
Few ballet images are as familiar as Aurora caught in a life interrupted before it has properly begun, and that sense of suspension still lands with force here. In a segment linked to The Sleeping Beauty and its long afterlife through Charles Perrault and Tchaikovsky, the stage holds to one clear situation: a curse, a sudden stillness, a world paused around her. With precise movement, sustained lines and held positions, and elegant glides, professional ballerinas retell a recognisable story that continues to move us to this day.
What is Ballet of Lights?
Ballet of Lights is a live ballet performance made up of multiple short segments, where professional dancers perform in fibre-optic costumes and lighting supports clear, readable movement. It brings together classical technique and contemporary visual elements, taking inspiration from familiar works such as The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Peter Pan. The result is approachable for first-time audiences and families, while still offering variation in tone and choreography.
What stays with you after Ballet of Lights is the clarity of it all: the graceful movement, the steady build of tension, the quiet release that follows, all carried by illuminated costumes that keep the eye engaged. In Johannesburg, it feels polished and yet accessible for ballet newcomers, and a visually fresh outing for anyone returning to it.
Ballet of Lights takes place at John Kani Theatre – The Market Theatre. There are two back-to-back performances scheduled for 16:00 and 18:00, with each show running for approximately 60 minutes.