Cinderella?

No worries! You shall go to the ball  .................... well at least if Matthew Bourne’s running the party!

“Wow, wow and more wow!”, would be the phrase that springs to mind!

In the words of Lady GaGa – “Mr Bourne, you left me speechless!”

There are only a select few dance pieces that have actually made me feel like that – American Ballet Theatre - In The Upper Room, Rambert – Alinah Curva, Northern Ballet – Wuthering Heights are others.

Cinderella was thoroughly enjoyable and so cleverly adapted and created. The choreography was amazing and the characterisations from every single individual were brilliant and of course Prokofiev’s score. Theatrically it was one of the best pieces of dance I have seen in a long time and while I was a student a Bird I was as regular as the theatre cat at Sadlers Wells watching almost everything that came.

The set, the costumes, the attention to the authentic detail of 1940’s Britain in the blitz was just awe inspiring   - I could just go on and on and on and on about the brilliance of this production! I am not at all surprised it won best new dance production at the Olivier Awards.

I noticed that throughout the performance everyone was their own character and were dressed specifically as that character – there was no certain point where characters were dressed the same, even down to the uniformed pilots. This demonstrates how Matthew Bourne thinks about the concept of realism and knows that everyone in any particular situation is an individual with their own character traits. No two people at a party are dressed the same whereas in Cleopatra all the corps de ballet were dressed identical and costumed the same which is more staged than reality. In real life we are all different and unique and this is what he embraces!

The performers were individuals, different sizes and shapes – one guy was really quite small and was cast as a young boy in the production and with the help of his very good characterisation skills he was a very believable child and you knew instantly what his character was.

I’ve always admired Matthew Bourne’s choreography and how he choreographs for his story and characters not wholly for the element of dance. All the dancers in his company are trained either from ballet, contemporary or musical theatre colleges (which gives hope to more of us) and the majority were English, which was also refreshing to see – home grown talent showing they are brilliant dancers and just as good as the Americans and Russians.

There was the most beautiful bedroom pas de deux between Cinderella and the pilot (the prince) which was both beautifully danced and performed, you could really feel the passion and connection between the two dancers which made it very believable for the audience.

Kerry Biggin, who was performing the role of Cinderella, was fantastic as not only did she dance beautifully but she performed amazingly too, you really believed that she was Cinderella. She was just as amazing with her ballet technique as the girl the week before who was Cleopatra but she was a ‘normal’ shape and size. She did not have the typical aesthetic ballet dancer shape and in her ‘ball gown’ she looked stunning – what a dress! She was very toned and muscular with a nice womanly shape to her. It was so nice to see the lead not being played by a small, skinny girl who looks anoerexic or the piece looking a bit perverted in love scenes with the lead looking as if she has not yet reached puberty. So there is hope for us who are aesthetically challenged, we Cinderellas can still go to the ball?

I remember when I participated in ‘The Place’s’ Easter Course 2 years ago which was run by Matthew Bourne’s company and he even came in to watch the showing at the end of the week, I had the pleasure of working with Kerry. We were learning repertoire from ‘Edward Scissorhands’ but before we started learning any of the choreography we did a whole lesson on characterisation and creating a character. We had to go away and create a profile of our individual character and ask each other questions about it in the following session. Kerry told us Matthew is very keen on characters and loves to work with people who are brilliant dancers but are also theatrical performers. Very encouraging !!!

Matthew Bourne cannot be particularly hung up on body image as most of his dancers are ‘normal’, which again creates this sense of realism as not everyone looks the same. His focus then must be on their dance ability – they were all amazing dancers and the lifts were just as spectacular and graceful as NBT!

Thinking back to watching Cleopatra the week before, both productions had female leads and both were beautiful dancers but Cinderella blew Cleopatra off the park with the ‘WOW’ factor!

It was inspirational and encouraging that diversity in dance does exist and that realism is being embraced – especially as Matthew Bourne’s ‘New Adventures’ is labelled ‘ballet’!!!

 “Mr Bourne I love you – thank you for restoring my faith and hope for the future of dance and for a wonderful theatrical inspiring experience – may many more ‘Cinderellas’ go to the ball!”

P.S. “My CV is in the post !!”