If you want to get a sense of the extravagance on offer in The National Ballet of Canada’s remount of The Sleeping Beauty, keep in mind that the production requires 340 costumes and 122 wigs. That’s a lot of curly white judge’s manes. Whether it’s a cheer-worthy pirouette or a simple wave, ballet dancers move with an ethereal quality that indeed seems plucked from the Brothers Grimm — which is why their gravity-mocking spins appear completely at home in this ancient mythical yarn.

This 1972 Rudolf Nureyev version of the classic story (after the original choreographed by Marius Petipa) is something of a Canadian artifact. Having a Goliath international talent like Nureyev work so closely with the company was no regular stretch at the bar, and his pedigree still leaps high alongside Tchaikovsky’s twinkling score. Nicholas Georgiadis’ opulent period costumes hark back not only to centuries past, but also to hefty arts budgets long since buried. The detailed patchwork tutus and brocaded court scenes are the stuff that inspires (and actually deserves) platitudes like “feast for the eyes.” Georgiadis’ large-scale set designs — particularly the smoke-clogged layers of forest that envelop Prince Florimund as he journeys to meet his bride — keep this determinedly traditional ballet feeling fresh.

Veteran principal dancer Xiao Nan Yu was a mature and magnanimous Princess Aurora in Saturday’s matinee performance, a confident match for guest artist Jason Reilly’s workhorse athleticism in the role of Prince Florimund. But The Sleeping Beauty is less about the story and more about dance itself (even within the plot, much of the action consists of court dances for the king and queen), and is very much an achievement by the whole company. If you’re a longtime ballet patron, come for Princess Aurora’s leg-of-iron balances. If you don’t know the difference between “plier” and “pilates,” you’ll still get prickles at the bravado group numbers and, of course, the big hairdos.