Cover photo: The Fairy (guest artist April Ball) and the Prince (Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer James Moore) in a scene from Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Cendrillon (Photo © Angela Sterling)
Choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) arrived at Pacific Northwest Ballet this month, running through February 12. Like his gripping Roméo et Juliette, already added to PNB’s repertory, it is set to one of Prokofiev’s expressive scores which adds much to moods and colors. Despite the folk tale context, this is not necessarily a Cinderella for children.
There’s no doubt that Maillot’s choreography suits PNB dancers wonderfully well. In the Cendrillon cast both opening night, Friday and again Saturday, every dancer seemed at the height of his or her powers. Only two dancers differed in the casts: the Father, danced Friday by Seth Orza and Saturday by William Lin-Yee; and the Prince, danced Friday by James Moore, and Saturday by guest and PNB alumnus Lucien Postlewaite.
The same team who worked on Roméo et Juliette also did this production from Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. With Maillot came scene designer Ernest Pignon-Ernest, who for Cendrillon created what looked like sliding book pages, some of them a bit dog-eared; costume designer Jerome Kaplan, whose fantastical designs for the women highlighted the bodies they cover and left movement crystal clear; and lighting designer Dominique Drillot, who subtly enhanced the action.
At the start, Maillot has added to the folk tale a flashback to the idyllic closeness between father, wife, and daughter before the mother died, as remembered by a still-grieving Cinderella in her drab beige dress. Both nights, Noelani Pantastico danced the lead role. Every movement by this deeply expressive and graceful dancer—her head, her arm, her foot, her body—informed her character’s feelings and furthered the action.
Mother, danced by guest April Ball (who came from Monte Carlo at short notice to replace a PNB dancer now on maternity leave) returns in a much-enhanced role as the Fairy, not a godmother in this case, but mother watching over daughter.
Father, too has a much bigger role, and his ambivalence and doubt is clear between his feelings for his deceased wife and precious daughter, and his feelings for his new, sexy wife and her insistence on precedence for her self-centered daughters (Rachel Foster and Sara Ricard Orza). Lin-Yee brought this out especially well Saturday, though it may have been just seeing the role for the second time which made it clearer.
As the new wife, Lesley Rausch is superb, at her very best. Her dancing, her acting, every movement is perfection. And her ball gown—well, just a train over her corsets—is in the shape of a scorpion’s tail, a wonderful touch!
The Prince is a somewhat soft role. He spends much time with his four friends (very well danced and synchronized by Kyle Davis, Benjamin Griffiths, Price Suddarth, and Ezra Thomson) trying not to be bored, but he really only comes to a sense of himself in the beautiful love duet between himself and Cinderella in the second act, and again in the third, perhaps the highlights of the ballet from the sheer dance point of view.
In another addition, two Pleasure Superintendents, men whose only job apparently is to keep the country enjoying a superficial level of entertainment, and who come and go, guiding the characters in that direction. They are, indeed, wonderful comic roles, expertly danced with neat feet and quick gestures by Steven Loch and Miles Pertl who must have great fun with it.
Against all the pleasures of movement, costume, lighting, scenery, music, there are many moments in Cendrillon which seem like unnecessary padding of the story. As the step-daughters (and later, Cinderella, at the fairy’s insistence), choose dresses for the ball, four grotesque mannequins come out (Ryan Cardea, Joshua Grant, Christian Poppe and Dylan Wald), modeling some of the possible garments and taking far too long about it. Because of this, the first act stretches a bit for the content.
More padding is included when the Prince and friends cross the seas to find Cinderella (Why? She was in his own country before the ball) and when four exotic-erotic dancers of the new land perform for them. And why, when the Prince is looking for Cinderella’s foot—not her shoe, she is barefoot throughout where all the other women are on pointe—do the two stepsisters and their mother receive his emissaries in their corsets?
At the very end, designer Kaplan strikes a discordant note with Cinderella’s wedding dress of sumptuous gold gauze and gilded bustier. Given that she is all about simplicity and innocence, why not just a golden shift, as her ball gown was a simple white one?
Conductor Emil de Cou and the PNB orchestra received enthusiastic plaudits, both at the start when de Cou came out, and at the end.
A note on seating choice: from the main floor Friday it was impossible to see the intricate and clever floor lighting, whereas that was easy to see from the third last row at the top of the house Saturday.On the other hand, from the main floor, all the details of acting and movement are clear and essential to the tale. But up at the top of the house, much of that is missed, particularly if audience members did not read the extensive notes first. For instance, if they hadn’t they wouldn’t know that that Cinderella’s mother and the Fairy are the same.
