Cendrillon / Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo

MONDAY, JULY 13 / 9:30 PM

Postponed to the next day in case of bad weather

Roman Theater

Duration : 1h50

Choreography Jean-Christophe Maillot

Music Sergei Prokofiev

Set Design Ernest Pignon-Ernest

Costumes Jérôme Kaplan

Lighting Dominique Drillot

World premiere by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo: April 3, 1999, at the Salle Garnier, Opéra de Monte-Carlo

Jean-Christophe Maillot offers a moving reflection on how the memory of those who have passed shapes the future of those who remain. From the moment the curtain rises, Cinderella appears holding in her hands the white dress of her late mother. Within this blended family, mourning becomes impossible, for the memory of the deceased is rendered taboo by those who have taken her place. Yet the choreographer imagined a stepmother and stepsisters quite unlike those one might expect. Here, there is no embittered matron nor stepsisters as ugly as they are foolish. All three are manipulative predators who use their sensuality to obtain whatever they desire.

A single character serves as a counterpoint: the Fairy, a luminous evocation of Cinderella’s mother, who helps her navigate the pitfalls of the artificial world she is entering. Beyond its meditation on grief, Cinderella also offers a humorous and ferocious portrait of a society awash in artifice, where the pursuit of pleasure robs those who indulge in it of their sense of reality. Distraction, idleness, and boredom stand in stark contrast to Cinderella, whose bare foot becomes the ballet’s symbolic focus. It represents not only the young girl’s simplicity and purity, but also that essential part of the body without which dance cannot exist.