With Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella in Oxford and the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new version on DVD it seems that Ashton’s version, still performed in Covent Garden, is being left behind. However novelty isn’t everything and here in Oxford tradition is often something held dear to the heart.
Bourne first transported Cinderella to wartime Britain, and more specifically the Blitz, in 1997, marking a great shift in the performance of the ballet and the fairytale itself – as the bombs fall Cinderella finds the Pilot of her dreams. A male Fairy Godmother is not as drastic a change as male swans but the production is suitably innovative for a choreographer and director often hailed as groundbreaking.
Much more recent is David Bintley’s work in Birmingham – less obviously original to the layman and probably least surprising to someone who grew up with the Disney version of the plot – the neglectful father has been replaced with a Stepmother and the Ugly Sisters are danced by women, which makes them less pantomime and in many ways more comic, because they are believable.
However the canonical version has not been eclipsed. The inclusion of a father beloved by Cinderella and manipulated by the Ugly Sisters makes the First Act all the more tragic and the empty vastness of the stage makes Cinderella’s solos more evocative. The lack of artifice and high-concept allows the romanticism and lyricism of the music and choreography to shine through all the more.
Something the Royal Ballet have always mastered is costumes, and the story of Cinderella requires some dramatic costume changes. The drabness of her initial tatters are more than made up for by Cinderella’s entrance at the ball with a lace cloak stretching across the entire stage – it’s a moment of extravagence which takes you back to childhood. For the boys there’s an abundance of role models with the cheeky Jester entirely stealing the show whenever he appears. Still, Bourne’s version does provide us with men in uniform and, having witnessed the royal wedding fever which swept the nation last Friday, I know they will be well received.
Of course the standard of dancing and choreography is brilliant across the board and each production has its merits. It is very in vogue at the moment to adapt well known fairytales and the reason these adaptations work is because of the intimate knowledge and love of the original shared by the audience and performers. Re-interpretation often serves as a mirror, highlighting and challenging previous assumptions, but however much I look forward to an inventive retelling I tend to drift back to the original. Call me sentimental but I still love a classic.
