Prokofiev: Cinderella *****
Momoko Hirata (Cinderella)
© Bill Cooper
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Mayflower, Southampton, 25th January 2017
Compared with his raw, heartrending music for Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev composed a sassier, slinkier score for Cinderella and this has given choreographers licence to lend the ballet a chic or satirical update. Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon play on the fantastical aspects in their productions, stylish and superficial respectively. But the grandmother of British Cinderellas is Sir Frederick Ashton’s classic, in which David Bintley himself danced one of the Ugly Sisters. Bintley’s 2010 Birmingham Royal Ballet version, however, is the antithesis to Ashton. Instead of pantomime, he offers pure fairy tale every magical step of the way.
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