“The bad fairy was my favourite”. When your three and seven-year-old daughters agree that the villain of the piece was their favourite, you know that you must at least have chosen something appropriate for their age. On our way to the show I was thinking over how challenging it must be to prepare a ballet production suitable for such young minds. After seeing a cartoony trailer with puffy fonts and too much pink for my taste, I was not sure I was going to enjoy a ballet performance featuring a narrator as part of the show. I was so wrong.

‘My First Ballet’ captivated my children and me. I could hardly manage to tear my eyes from the stage to regard their gobsmacked faces, with mouths hanging open and eyes which seemed incapable of blinking.

Sebastian Charles, with his masterful voice and magical tricks in between scenes, did an excellent job. Sometimes I thought that the music was a little too loud for his voice to be heard clearly, but with his eloquence he guided us successfully through the adaptation and provided us with details which made Sleeping Beauty’s story seem somehow avant-garde.

I especially liked the fact that Aurora was given the magical gifts of strength, wisdom and beauty of the heart. It was also very touching to see Carabosse, the evil fairy, turning out to be not such a Manichean character. She is so moved by Aurora’s hug thanking her for her gift of a rose intended to prick her finger and put her to sleep that she then has a change of heart and tries to stop her doing so! Once it is too late, she vows to help her and guards her sleep.

‘My First Ballet’ is a collaboration between the English National Ballet and the English Ballet School, and features some of their most talented students. Their dancing was both impressive and inspiring. Aurora was light and gracious. The fairies were both strong and adorable and the prince’s movements were also very elegant.

The show was spectacular also in its details. The stage was beautifully set, with multilayered deep thick forests as the background. The costumes were carefully chosen to fascinate the young audience, with shiny tiaras, gems and golden threads on display. Indeed, the adaptation is full of surprises which keep the ballet continually engaging for both the children and their adults. One of the actresses played a very agile cat, and evoked the movements of these creatures incredibly well. It is a shame I cannot mention everything included in this diverse and impressive show.

My girls took ‘My First Ballet’ home with them in their hearts and I am sure it will stay with them for a very long time. They ended our magical day with their very own version of the show doing mini pirouettes and jumps together in the garden, which while not quite as impressive as the enchanting steps we had admired on stage that afternoon, still managed to capture something of the show’s sweetness and its easy grace.

This visually luscious ballet for kids is a slimmed-down version of Tchaikovsky's 4 hour epic from 1890. At around 1 hour 30 minutes, including a short interval for wees and teas, it's the perfect introduction to classical ballet should your little one be remotely interested in that kind of thing. My nearly 4 year old daughter is reasonably interested, having recently begun lessons herself – and this was indeed Her First Ballet (as in, proper show in a big theatre and everything). She's also very familiar with the story (admittedly the Grimms' version via Philip Pullman, but still, it translates easily even for a small person), so the show was likely to do well in the attention-span stakes.

With a slightly inauspicious kick-off involving a toddler with a scream like a banshee a few seats behind us, the show quickly captivated even the most wiggly of wrigglers, with a frankly awesome giant set depicting the castle in the forest and some very pretty costumes to drool over. Oh – and the dancing! Having dismissed the extremely youthful appearance of the cast as a trick of the light / something to do with my own advancing years, a glance at the programme revealed that they were all – apart from the pivotal plot narrator (co-author Saskia Portway) – second year students at the English National Ballet School. It turns out this production is even choreographed by a 2010 ENBS graduate, George Williamson, and has only been running since 2012 - so, the picture of youth all over. And an excellent job they do too. The evil Carabosse (aka Malificent, or The Thirteenth Fairy), indeterminate in gender (I think from the faces in the programme it was Alex Hallas) and resplendent in a rippling black gown, a wheeled cart and Elizabeth I hairdo was inspiring enough for my child to rename her black flannel after her. The fairies led by Queen Lilac and Aurora (Beauty) sparkled, twirled and smiled through gritted teeth as all good dancers en pointe must. A couple of under confident pirouettes and slightly untidy leaps in no way detracted from the spectacle of the feat which was, essentially, a very 'trad' classical ballet (bulging tights and all – yikes! The Balletboyz this is NOT). The court dancing scenes for Aurora's birthday party (presumably vignettes of the lengthy scenes in the original work) were the only moment where the wriggler's concentration waned noticeably, but such was the cleverness of the construction that these moments were brought to an end by a dramatic plot point or random interlude at just the right moment. A well-placed comedy section featuring the cavorting of various fairy tale characters even turned out to be from Tchaikovsky original, bizarrely.

Sadly I can't tell you which dancer should get credit for which role, as there were no credits in the programme. Neither can I do justice to the lavish beauty of the set and costumes, as we weren't allowed to take photos. Suffice it to say, if your child can sit entranced through Frozen and is at all interested in dance, this show is well-worth a punt, even if it mainly serves to reinvigorate your own latent interest in this bizarrely, fabulously niche art form. I'm even considering getting a babysitter for the Balletboyz show Life on Friday 13th May... and that's saying something.