If you’ve seen the recent film version of Sondheim’s Into the Woods then you’re familiar with a different, flinty eyed view of the Princess Dream that is at the heart of Cinderella. That Cinderella, deftly rendered by Anna Kendrick, is decidedly ambivalent about life at court and only becomes more so as she discovers that, ultimately, her prince was raised to be charming rather than sincere. Who could blame her for ultimately turning him down? Well, that was also the problem with Vladimir Shklyarov’s Prince. He took to the stage in the ballroom scene with blithe arrogance and smug self-satisfaction, all played as arch comedy. It was amusing and he pulled it off well... but the manner was completely at odds with that of the prince who later set eyes on Cinderella and fell rapturously in love. The prince that fell in love was sincere and ardent but we weren’t witnesses of that transformation... the plot lacked dramatic cohesion – an irregularity otherwise not seen in Ratmansky's later work. I couldn’t help but wonder how Nadezhda Batoeva’s Cinderella would have reacted if she’d met the smarmy prince who preened across the stage to open the second act. She might, like Kendrick’s Cinderella, have run for the woods.
The first act was the best of the three dramatically speaking. Throughout, you could sense this was not your typical recycled, re-staged for the hundredth time story ballet: Ratmansky is a master story-teller who has helped to revive interest in story ballets. Yet, among other problems, is the Fairy Godmother, portrayed here as a cloying clownish bag lady and whose accompanying Four Seasons didn’t have any logical reason for existing other than to use up some music. They danced well but what were they, really? The stepsisters, Margarita Frolova and Yekaterina Ivannikova, kept performing the same joke, over and over, which wore out by the second act. The same might be said of the role of Stepmother, but Yekaterina Kondaurova is a refined performer, and she was able to make more of the role than it really contains. Soslan Kulaev, as Cinderella’s father, was maudlin in the extreme and could have been cut without any sense of loss. Holding this whole first act together was Batoeva’s Cinderella and her desperate yearning to free herself from drudgery. Hers is by any measure the most fully realized character in the ballet and Batoeva was fully present in all of her scenes, giving the part a rich texture that was not there in the other characters. She is simply a beautiful dancer and made the role her own. In each of her dances she made the most of the opportunies offered to her by Ratmansky’s choreography,and was, at various times, bored, frustrated, angry, resentful, hopeful, yearning, shy, sulky, winsome, fragile, heartbroken, bereft, and finally, lyrically beautiful.