Later this year, Birmingham Royal Ballet will take the audacious step of staging a ballet based upon heavy metal music by Black Sabbath at The Lowry. Tonight, however, there is the unashamedly classical ballet, Prokofiev’s Cinderella.
However, despite its classical status, choreographer David Bintley introduces some daringly original developments into the well-known storyline. Essentially, this version of Cinderella is series of simple ideas realised brilliantly.
Beatrice Parma’s dance solo in act one is staged in the manner one might expect of a servant mistreated by bullies. Parma’s Cinderella, while alone in the kitchen, mocks her cruel stepsisters and, using a broom, allows herself the luxury of fantasising about an ideal dance partner. In the first of many small but telling details, the victimised Cinderella dances barefoot, emphasising her aching loneliness and sense of loss at the passing of her parents.
Choreographer Bintley does not treat the ballet as a sacred object and dares to bring in elements from other genres. There is a hint of pantomime in the depiction of the wicked Stepsisters. There is a marked physical contrast between Ellis Small, dark-haired and slender, and Olivia Chang Clark, blonde and (artificially) plump. The distinction extends into the personalities; while Cinderella’s origins help her develop humility and compassion, the stepsisters are vulgar and greedy, willing to disrupt an elaborate formal dance routine to gobble down cakes.
The stepsisters allow Bintley to poke fun at the genre of ballet with Ellis Small’s pained and sullen reactions demonstrating just how much it hurts to hold the en pointe position. Bintley constantly confounds audience expectations; Enrique Bejarano Vidal strikes a dramatic pose as The Prince in search of his missing love and then has to run like blazes off the stage pursued by potential brides. The quest to find someone capable of fitting into the discarded glass slipper is illustrated by a dancer stuck atop a pile of shoes trying one after the other.
At times, Bintley leans towards the grotesque. The larger-than-life wigs by Shuailun Wu transform the dancers wearing them into figures of parody from a Hogarth painting: dance masters and tailors making excessive demands and presenting enormous bills. In the second act, the exaggerated hairstyles of the footmen bring to mind the well-known gross-out scene from There’s Something About Mary.
Yet for all the innovations, the dominant feature of the ballet is simply quality. The ballet opens with the stark setting of a funeral before John Macfarlane’s set opens up, freeing Cinderella from the confines of her kitchen to dance joyfully under a ravishing, starry night sky. Cinderella’s liberation from servitude is celebrated in a series of dances in which the character experiences freedom, encountering for the first time the four seasons of the year. The gradual assembly of Cinderella’s crystal coach brings the first act to a moving close.
The ambitious scale of the ballet becomes clear as the royal ball is staged with the large cast in ravishing costumes against a lavish background. The humour in the production continues with a line of courtiers forming to gawk at the dance between Cinderella and her Prince while the wicked Stepsisters cause chaos by their brash antics.
There is a sense of dread, with Cinderella reminded her freedom has a time limit—she is surrounded by the workings of a massive clock ominously ticking the time away. Yet the production retains the innocence of a fairy story; the transformation of animals into coachmen and servants is achieved with some charming frog, lizard and mice costumes that will delight younger audience members.
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Cinderella offers everything dance enthusiasts might expect and more. Ambitious in scale, with a large, talented cast and lush costumes and theatre sets while retaining a sense of humanity and offering an unexpected degree of humour.