Gregory Dean:
“Cinderella”
Royal Danish Ballet
The Old Stage
March 9th, 2019
The biggest challenge for contemporary choreographers is finding a suitable score for a full evening ballet. Luckily, Sergei Prokofiev have created not only the score to “Romeo and Juliet” but also a score based on the fairy tale of “Cinderella” in 1940.
An abundance of leading and not so leading choreographers has since created their versions. However, several of them has felt the need to time travelling the story to another era. Rudolph Nureyev moved his version to the 1920 silent movies Hollywood. Matthew Bourne chose to place his version in World War2´s London. A rather clever choice as it united the storyline with the period of Prokofiev´s score. Vladimir Malachov set his Berlin version in a ballet company frame, himself taking on one of the evil stepsisters in drag as a jealous older ballerina.
They have all been there, Neumeier, Wheeldon, Ratmansky etc. In 2008, Tim Rushton made his version at RDB with a combination of the RDBs classical dancers and his own troop from Danish Dance Theater, which proved that mixing classical and modern dancers deprived both groups of their best shots.
Dragging Along
Still Sir Frederic´s Ashton version from 1948 remained the version to beat. His coup was mixing the classical style with very broad humor by casting himself and Sir Robert Helpman as the evil stepsisters. Partly a nod to the British tradition of drag performance and partly the understanding that a heavy object trying to be light is much more effective than a light object pretending to be heavy.
Another obstacle for choreographers taking on “Cinderella” is the volume of dancing fairies and divertissements. Although very pretty and with beautiful music,it often slows down the progress of the storytelling.
In this new version, the choreographer, Principal Dancer Gregory Dean has cut significant parts of these divertissements; still the ballet seems rather long.
Gregory Dean has chosen to keep the ballet in the classical style and although you cannot specify an exact time period, we are somewhere between 1830 and 1910. He is very true to the storyline and the choreography for the season fairies are pretty close to what appeared to be an accepted standard.
His choreography for the ball are beautiful and suitable. In the first act, he includes a dancing lesson for the two stepsisters with Mr. Bournonville himself, danced by Principal Dancer Marcin Kupinski, who takes the two stepsisters through parts of the trio from “La Conservatoire”.
Double Duty
When planning his production, Gregory Dean decided that the ballerinas taking on the role of Cinderella also should also dance the evil stepsisters in other casts. As far as I understand this was based on a wish to get the best dancers on stage as much as possible. However, injuries close to the premiere made his scheme fall down. Instead of getting three casts, we are down to two and the stepsisters roles are shared on a broader base.
I am not 100% sure that sharing the roles of stepsister/Cinderella was the best idea he has ever had. The stepsisters needs dancers who are experienced with comedy and timing. Principal Kizzy Matiakis, who will also dance Cinderella, have character and comedy skills in abundance, where her sister in crime, Wilma Giglio is predominately a classical lyric dancer. As so much of the comedy are based on this duo, so why not use this inherited skillset to the max?
Getting the Pairings Right
Our leading young ballerina Ida Praetorius is of course first cast Cinderella, not based on rank, but because she is the ultimate dancer for the role and she delivers on a high level as the brave, sweet and much put upon Cinderella. However, Ida Praetorius´ Cinderella had more to fight with.
Running a ballet company is a demanding job. The artistic director and the choreographer also has the responsibility to develop all dancers and to give each talented dancer the opportunity to try his or hers skills in the leading roles.
Soloist Alexander Bozinoff is one of these dancers, who is standing in line for the big chance. Last season he was impressive as one of the thee casts as the leading role Hermann in Liam Scarlett´s “Queen of Spades”.
This time he got the first night performance as Cinderella´s prince. He did make very fine work in his solos and ensembles. His jumps and pirouettes were fine. He was an attentive partner. However, it was psychically and style wise not a good match. When on pointe, which of course happens quite a lot in a classical Pas de Deux, Ida Praetorius dwarfed him. He could not match her long lines and pliancy and thereby the pas de deux which should have been the highlight of the evening, did not quite make it to the finishing line. They would both have done better with other more suitable partners.
An Abundance of Fairies
That the RDB have other strong female dancers was evident in the season fairies, where Lena Maria Gruber, Heather Dunn and especially Emma Riis-Kofoed and Stephanie Chen-Gundorph showed their outstanding dancing. This ensemble was led by a strong Ji Min Hong as the Good Fairy and followed by eight supporting fairies.
Gregory Dean had set himself a demanding task and have practically the whole corps de ballet in action. In addition to the fairy ensemble, he has four cadets supporting the prince. This group also included Soloist Jón Axel Fransson, one of the best dancers in the company, who could have deserved a meatier role. Guilherme de Menezes and Liam Redhead partnered the evil sisters.
Dean´s work for the ensemble was impressive. He has set himself a very difficult task and by insisting on keeping the ballet in a romantic style, instead of time traveling the material as many other choreographers have chosen, He did not take the easy road. However, you will need help and some tricks to make “Cinderella” interesting for a full evening.
Game and Set
His partner in design, Jon Morrell, who also was the designer for Liam Scarlett´s “Queen of Spades” last year’s outstanding costumes and scenography , have again created an abundance of beautiful costumes, including a full set of elegant summer clothes for the ensemble to wear in the finale lineup. The Royal Theatre will have grey frockcoats for the next 20 years.
I am not as enamored by his sets designs as I was of last year´s production. The designs for the ballroom and castle are outstanding. However, the lighted electronic backdrops for the forest scenes are too cute and dwarf the dancers. The front curtain is a bad mixture of Disney and an André Rieux concert. The frame with the gigantic shoe, which also gives the intro to Cinderella’s loss of her parents, does simply not work. The big shadow of the shoe limits the storytelling and it creates a lot of noise moving the platform to get the ballet started.
In all a beautiful production and a beautiful score. However, unfortunately it is also a rather thin story that needs something very special to last a whole evening.
Photos by Henrik Stenberg Copyright(c) by Royal Danish Ballet
- Ida Praetorius as Cinderella
- Kizzy Matiakis & Wilma Giglio as the evil stepsisters
- Ida Praetorius & Alexander Bozinoff as Cinderella and the Prince
- Heather Dunn as the Summer Fairy
- The Ball
It was just sooo boring.
Very Disneish (I don't like Disney...) and very childish.
I was so disappointed.
Posted by: tsuru | March 24, 2019 at 03:55 PM