Matthew Bourne's Cinderella Ballet

Image found here

I love the story of Cinderella, so of course I wanted to see this New Adventures' ballet at the Kennedy Center. BUT, knowing my taste in dance and how I've felt about ballets based on other stories (ex. Dracula) before, I should have been prepared not to like the show. It's not that it was bad; it's just that these modern ballets tend not to focus on beautiful dancing, which is the whole point of ballet. It's more like a silent play with some musical-like dance numbers. Plus, this story is based in London during the 1940 Blitz, which is clearly a modern take on the original fairy tale (Prokofiev wrote the music for the ballet during World War II); an interesting spin on it, to be sure, but the story loses some of its magic that way. Every time I consider buying tickets to a ballet, I should ask myself, "Is it The Nutcracker or Swan Lake?" And if the answer is no, I probably shouldn't go because I won't like it

Here's a highlight reel you can watch:

Act I

Image found here

We start in the family's home, and the set is completely gray, from the walls to the furniture. Even the costumes were all in gray tones, too. Our Cinderella is kind of dweeby-looking, which made me sad. I imagine that Cinderella is beautiful whether it's before or after the ball. This version was a nerd (and remains so after she meets her prince). Again, if we're talking about ballet here, I want the dancers to be gorgeous throughout (I think there's no need for me to say that no tutus were present during this production. Alas.). And her prince wasn't much better. He's not a prince at all, but a wounded American solider whom she cares for in the house. The stepsisters never try to woo him themselves (they already have boyfriends), so that main part of the original story's plot line was completely erased.

This is not the family you picture in Cinderella. Image found here

You also notice right away that there are extra characters in this version. There's a father-figure in a wheelchair, and along with the two stepsisters, there are three stepbrothers as well. The personification of the brothers actually really bothered me. The youngest is a teenager with bad skin but is dressed like a boy ten years his junior. Another brother is portrayed as being gay by liking fashion design; what a cliched stereotype. And the third brother is supposed to be creepy with greasy hair, long stares, and a foot fetish. I hate that this piece continued the taboo of a harmless kink, making it seem gross and undesirable. "Don't yuck someone else's yum." I felt like these characters were being personified in a way that was disrespectful to marginalized communities; we should be more accepting and forward-thinking than that. Plus, these characters aren't important to the story, so why they were added to begin with is beyond me.

Does this look like pretty ballet dancing to you? No, I didn't think so. Image found here.

The dancing, particularly in this act, was nearly cringe-worthy. It's not that the people are bad dancers; not at all! It's the choreography that was so awkward and not graceful in the least. In a way this makes sense because of the characters performing the dance, but this is a ballet, which in my mind means beautiful dancing. This was not that. There was even a bit with dancers wearing gas masks and dancing as if they were in West Side Story (without the snaps). They were holding flashlights, too, which annoyed me to no end: I hate props like that in ballet, and the lights would blind me periodically. Perhaps to save me from the bumbling moves?

Image found here

Toward the end of the act, a male angel shows up in silky pajamas as a stand-in for a fairy godmother (He reminded me a bit of Caesar Flickerman, Stanley Tucci’s character in The Hunger Games.). Our Cinderella is wearing a white trench coat rather than a gown, and she rides off in the "bitch seat" of a motorcycle. No pumpkin carriage drawn by horses. No mice to help her make a dress. Sigh.



Act II

The best part of this act (the entire show, really) was the beginning of the first scene. We're looking inside a building that has been destroyed by a raid; furniture is strewn all about, the building's structure is collapsed, and people are lying on the floor. But then they begin to move in slow motion, as if they were set to rewind, and they slowly move the furniture back into place, and the whole set comes back together until we're inside a dance hall called the Café de Paris. This whole part was very cool and effective. This set had much more color, with red linens on the tables and pink and purple sparkles to highlight the sign and stairs.

Image found here

There was more dancing in this part than the first act; it is a dance hall after all. But I still wasn't thrilled with the choreography; they actually did the floss and something like the patty-cake game! Their “drunk” dance was kind of funny, but honestly, I'd rather watch people at the social dances I go to in real life. And when Cinderella makes her big entrance in a sparkly white and silver gown (and a horrible blonde wig), emerging from the dry ice smoke, barely anyone even notices. I thought she would make the room go completely still, or she'd get dirty looks from some of the other women, but none of that happened. It was quite anticlimactic.

Image found here

Image found here

She does find her "prince" at the club, and they go back to his place. This part was actually beautiful, looking into his bedroom bathed in orange light from the early sunrise (or sunset?). Their pas de deux was really the only thing about this show that was reminiscent of ballet. It reminded me of Christopher Wheeldon's "After the Rain," which is one of my favorite pieces of all time. Watch:

But the act ends with everything falling apart, since this was like a flashback. A brick wall falls, smoke and flames come up, the drapes and curtains come down along with the scaffolding. The way the set is destroyed is almost as cool as the rewind part at the beginning. Once the clock struck midnight, our Cinderella is back in her street clothes laying on a stretcher, and we see her soldier is still bandaged (which he was not wearing at the dance). So was all of this a dream?

Act III

This act was the most confusing part of the entire production. Since it strayed so far from the original story, there were times when I didn’t even know what was happening. Plus they crammed five scenes into 40 minutes, so it was a little all over the place!

Image found here

We start on the streets of London with the prince looking for Cinderella. Some men attack him on the street randomly, and then he goes into the underground. There are prostitutes and gay men (also prostitutes?) down there trying to do business. At no point on his search does the soldier go to Cinderella’s house to find her. He knows where she lives! This is so ridiculous. Granted, she’s not there straight away, but she would have been eventually; he could wait a few days, show up on her doorstep, and there’d she be. But I digress…

Image found here

Eventually we’re in a hospital, and people are dancing in white lab coats with screens, camouflaging parts of the set as they moved. Cinderella is laying on the hospital bed, and her stepmother comes in and tries to suffocate her with a pillow! What?! And then the soldier gets electroshock therapy? None of this makes any sense, with the original story or with this modern version. They do eventually get out of there, thankfully. Well, not the stepmother. I’m pretty sure she's taken to the pysch ward.

Image found here

The last scene is at Paddington Station, where the couple is leaving on a train after their wedding. She’s dressed in black, which seems a bit depressing. The family gives her a happy send-off, again going against the entire evil step-family trope. Hmpf. But the scene shows several couples kissing goodbye, and it was quite romantic, I have to admit.

All in all, I can’t say I liked this show. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I wanted to see when I tell people, “I’m going to the ballet tonight!” I did think the modern twist was unique, and this production used surround sound along with the music (like the sound of airplanes overhead), so that was pretty neat. But in general, I wasn’t wowed. I mean, I was thinking about what I was going to have for breakfast the next morning, so that’s not a good sign. I already felt like the show was dragging on, and then the cast did a dance number during the curtain call and another one afterward! They just couldn’t let it go! End of scene, fin, stop!!!



*All gifs found here