Kelvin Coe and Lucette Aldous in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, 1972 Photography Gregory Weight CINDERELLA GOES TO THE BALLET Valerie Lawson looks at the many dance versions of this irrepressible tale.

© Valerie Lawson

Robert Helpmann and Frederick Ashton in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, 1972 Photography Paul Cox

She’s been a Hollywood star, a medieval princess, between a fairytale fantasy and Prokofiev’s magnificent wife. The Prokofievs’ separation took place three a padded and masked doll and a feisty feminist who but often sombre composition. months before Hitler’s army invaded the Soviet Union, prefers a valet to a prince. She’s gone to the ball in and thoughts of a fairytale ballet were put aside as a hot air balloon and a white Harley Davidson, though Tchaikovsky was once tempted to write a Cinderella Prokoviev worked on the kind of music, that would, her usual mode of transport is a pumpkin coach. Her score, but nothing came of it. Perhaps if he had, the as he put it, “resonate at the front”. story is told to the music of Mozart, Johann Strauss, ballet may then and there have joined The Sleeping Rossini, Glazunov and von Weber, but more often Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker as one of the Prokoviev finished the score forCinderella in 1944. The to that of Prokofiev. Covered in ashes, she sits by perennial classics. Instead, the Imperial Russian premiere the following year was not only a success, but the hearth, taunted by her stepsisters, before her version of Cinderella was not a success. Danced a political celebration. As the dance historian Jennifer transformation into a princess – in the tradition of to a score by Boris Fitinhof-Schell, a classmate Homans wrote: “This Cinderella [choreographed by her ballet sisters Princess Odette and Princess of Tchaikovsky’s, the now-forgotten ballet of 1893 Rostislav Zakharov] was a thinly veiled parable depicting Aurora, who also have to wait patiently for their was choreographed by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and the victory of a virtuous but downtrodden Cinderella moment. But Cinderella’s origins go back much Enrico Cecchetti. It starred the Italian Pierina Legnani, (the USSR) over her evil stepmother ... the point was further than the Swan Queen and Sleeping Beauty; who in Cinderella became the first ballerina to display clear: like the Red Army, ballet – Russian ballet – had the first known version ofCinderella was told in the her virtuosity by dancing 32 fouéttes – a trick she emerged from the war triumphant.” ninth century, in China. later brought to the third act of Swan Lake. For Lina and Prokofiev, there was no happy ending. Most ballet productions of Cinderella are based on Cinderella landed in London in 1906. Adeline Genée After the war she was sentenced to 20 years in a the late-17th-century fairytale by Charles Perrault, but danced the role at the Empire Theatre, best known prison camp on the charge of espionage, and his work there are several inspired by the blacker interpretation, as a music hall; true to the times, this Cinders was banned for being “anti-democratic”. Within the Aschenputtel, written by the Grimm Brothers in the featured some knockabout comedy, including the luscious score for Cinderella, in which “pure love is the early 19th century. Whatever the inspiration, the incongruous arrival on stage of a motor car, which central theme” (as Prokofiev’s biographer, Israel V. happily-ever-after tale is on the surface a young promptly broke down. Nestyev, said), it’s also perhaps possible to hear woman’s escapist dream, all sparkles, tiaras and the pain of the composer’s life, especially in the glittering coaches. But beneath the glamour there’s Under her French name, Cendrillon, the heroine time- threatening chimes of the clock in the midnight scene. gloom. Cinders’ silver-and-gold cloak has a coal- travelled to medieval France in Michel Fokine’s 1938 black lining. production at London’s Royal Opera House, for Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Fokine “Nureyev choreographed his own version, From the first ballet version of Cinderella, staged adopted the 19th-century ballet fashion of en travesti in Vienna in 1812, to the 21st-century Cinderellas but not, as in Coppélia, a woman dressed as a man, set in a Hollywood movie studio where we know today, the sweet story is also a tale of evil, but men dressed in drag as the Ugly Sisters. Cinderella, a starlet, is chased by the deception, deformation, sibling rivalry, good and bad mothers, a father who disappoints, and the midnight Cinderella finally found her (glass-slippered) feet with paparazzi (just as Nureyev had been).” chimes of a clock that makes a dream disappear. As the Bolshoi Ballet’s landmark production to Prokofiev’s the filmmaker Fellini once said: “Everyone knows that score in 1945. The difficult process that preceded the In the grey post-war years of London, Frederick Ashton time is Death, that Death hides in clocks.” premiere began years earlier, in 1940, when Prokofiev brought the sparkle of pantomime to Covent Garden was commissioned, not by the Bolshoi but by the Kirov just before the Christmas of 1948 with his full-length This blend of good and evil has entranced and frustrated Ballet in Leningrad, to compose a full-length evening production of Cinderella for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. choreographers for two centuries, and their task was ballet that would match the success of his Romeo It starred the beautiful Moira Shearer as Cinderella, made even more difficult after Prokofiev completed and Juliet. In the intervening years, the personal and and Ashton himself and Robert Helpmann were the Ugly his score for Cinderella during the Second World War. the political intertwined. By 1941, when Prokoviev Sisters. It was an inspired piece of casting, but one that That powerful score – one that marked a turning point began writing the score, his marriage to his wife, Lina, Kevin Jackson and Madeleine Eastoe with tipped the balance of the story, leading one magazine artists of The Australian Ballet in Cinderella’s history from a so-so ballet to a classic – had fallen apart and his new lover, Mira Mendelson, to label the production “The Ballet of the Ugly Sisters”. Photography Jeff Busby challenges choreographers to forge a strong connection threatened to kill herself if he ever went back to his Gailene Stock and artists of The Australian Ballet in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, 1980 Michela Kirkaldie and Kelvin Coe in Photography Paul Cox Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, 1980 Photography Jeff Busby

Damien Welch and Miranda Coney in Stanton Welch’s Cinderella, 1997 Photography Jim McFarlane

Frederick Ashton, Colin Peasley, Lucette Aldous and Robert Helpmann in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, 1972 Photography Gregory Weight

One critic characterised Ashton’s portrayal as dancers as dolls in padded body suits and masks. The Cinderella falls for the Prince’s valet, Dandini, as “the shyest, happiest, most innocent of monsters” Prince and Cinderella and their retinues lived in a Welch believed that “the subtle, implicit message while another loved Helpmann’s portrayal of a three-storey dollhouse which was eventually wrapped in of the traditional Cinderella story – that someone will “big, blustering bully … with just the right touches cellophane, sealing the characters in their unreal world. magically appear to rescue you from a bad situation – of appalling coyness, the whole garnished with a is not a great message to send to a young child. It’s mere wisp of pathos at the end”. When Rudolf Nureyev took the reins as artistic about standing up for yourself, making your own director of the Paris Opera Ballet, he asked Ashton decisions, choosing your own path, your own love”. When Margot Fonteyn eventually stepped into the for his Cinderella but was turned down. Instead, Christopher Wheeldon took the same view with his role of Cinderella, she made the heroine all her own Nureyev choreographed his own version, set in a 2010 production: “I think little girls today are over with a change of the kitchen-scene costume. Hers was Hollywood movie studio where Cinderella, a starlet, the idea that if you’re obedient and meek, you’ll black instead of the brown Shearer had worn, and she is chased by the paparazzi (just as Nureyev had been). be rewarded with a prince,” Wheeldon said. “In tied her scarf not under her chin but behind her neck, Julie Kavanagh, Nureyev’s biographer, believes there our version, she’s more in control of her fate”. in the manner of post-war factory workers. was “an element of wish fulfillment in the prospect of being able to stop the clock, as Cinderella does This century, Cinderella is more prevalent than ever The Australian Ballet celebrated its tenth anniversary when she signs a movie contract, thus ensuring her before, with Alexei Ratmansky, Ashley Page and David with this production. Ashton travelled to Australia immortality”. The production, starring Sylvie Guillem, Bintley all bringing their interpretations to the ballet (despite his fear of flying) to reprise his role with premiered in 1986, the same year as the death of stage. In Ratmansky’s first production of the ballet Helpmann, who brought with him some sensational Nureyev’s former lover Erik Bruhn, and seven years (2002), Cinderella wears a sweater and matching photographs by Lord Snowdon of the pair in costume. before Nureyev himself died. slouchy legwarmers, while in Page’s fashion fantasia, set in 18th-century Paris, her sisters wear lollipop- Walt Disney’s 1950 movie took an iron grip on the Both Matthew Bourne, for Adventures in Motion coloured crinolines and wigs that could well be Cinderella stereotype, and there were no significant Pictures, and Yuri Possokhov, for the Bolshoi Ballet, strutted on the catwalk. productions of the ballet until Oleg Vinogradov’s, placed their Cinderella stories within the Second in 1964, for the Novosibirsk Ballet, and then Ben World War. Possokhov introduced the figures of The Wherever Cinderella and her ugly sisters wander Stevenson’s 1970 interpretation for the National Storyteller (Prokofiev) writing his score, and his Muse and whatever they wear, we can be sure of two Ballet of Washington. (Lina Prokofiev). In Bourne’s 1997 production, set things: it will take a lot to top Prokofiev’s score, in the Blitz, Cinderella goes to the ball on a Harley and Cinderella definitely will go to the ball. Irony, disenchantment – rather than enchantment – Davidson and her prince is a pilot. and the influence of German Tanztheater were added to the Cinderella mix in the mid 1980s when Maguy Marin, That same year, Stanton Welch, for The Australian Valerie Lawson is an author and dance historian in a production for the Lyon Opera Ballet, dressed the Ballet, added feminist aspects to the story: