It's not often that I find myself watching ballet. The last time I saw any contemporary dance was at Uni with a piece about 9/11, which I was stewarding. To which the stewardess that I worked with said "well, did you understand that?".
Fortunately the well worn story of Cinderella comes to us ready understood, being so well known. But this has to be told entirely through the language of dance, not a language I am well versed in. I tap dance but ballet is something else, perhaps something more elegant, softer.
This is the perception of classical ballet, full of dainty little fairies in tutus turning pirouettes to Tchaikovsky. Matthew Borne over the years has turned ballet into something more modern, more subversive and, maybe, more accessible.
The story is set during the Second World War. An upper class family have invitations to go to a dance, something that their servant girl, Cinderella, wishes she could go. The setting of the living room is cold and eerie, slightly dilapidated due to the austerity of the war. It shows a family in decline. Interrupting all this is a magical dandy of a fairy godmother who introduces sparkle in the gloom and offers Cinderella an answer to her wish. She shall go to the ball!
In the beginning there seemed to be a lack of dancing as there was more of a stylised movement, but later in the ball scene there was dancing aplenty. The dancer's accurate points of their twists and turns was captivating, indeed I didn't feel time pass. What the dancer's had to say with their bodies was controlled to allow them full expression of what the human body could achieve. This dissolved any other awareness of the world that one may have.
There wasn't the usual ballet moves that one might expect, instead there was lots of angular shapes being made and unexpected sudden gestures that surprised. This was evident in particular in the hospital scene at the end where having met Prince Charming Cinderella is separated from him and his search for her while her 'family' galloped through the corridors.
The most affecting scene in the ballet was the day after Cinderella and Prince Charming's night together where they danced away from the prying eyes of others. The morning was theirs with the possibility of owning the rest of their lives together. It was really a splendid moment that you almost wanted to leave them to privacy.
I was entranced in this performance, I thought it was remarkable work from very hard working dancers guided by a very capable director. It made me want to watch more ballet, classical and modern, so I can get more of a nuance in their art, so I can learn the language of dance.
