Cinderella -- San Francisco Ballet Performance
Cinderella
San
Francisco Ballet Performance
May 4,
2013
There are many versions and variants of the Cinderella story. The most popular in recent times are the
French version written by Charles Perrault in 1697 and the German version(s) of
the Grimm Brothers from the early 1800s.
The Disney animated movie version, which was released in 1950, is
heavily influenced by Perrault and is probably the most familiar version of the
story in America. The American
Cinderella has been forcefully criticized by Jane Yolen (1982) as being
"a sorry excuse for a heroine, pitiable
and useless. She cannot perform even a
simple action to save herself . . . Cinderella begs, she whimpers, and at last
has to be rescued by -- guess who -- the mice! (p. 302) "The mass-market books have brought
forward a good, malleable, forgiving little girl and put her in Cinderella's
slippers. However, in most of the
Cinderella tales there is no forgiveness in the heroine's heart. No mercy.
Just justice." (p. 301)
"Hardy, helpful, inventive, that was the Cinderella of the old
tales, but not of the mass market in the nineteenth century. Today's mass market books are worse."
(p. 300) "The mass market American
"Cinderellas" have presented the majority of American children with
the wrong dream. They offer the passive
princess, the 'insipid beauty waiting . . . for Prince Charming' . . . But it
is the wrong Cinderella and the magic of the old tales has been falsified, the
true meaning lost, perhaps forever."
(p. 302-03)
I concur with this assessment, and so it was with great
expectancy that I attended the San Francisco Ballet's performance this weekend
in the high hope that they would do something interesting and inventive with
this ancient tale and its endless possibilities. Boy, did they ever deliver! The performance was magnificent. It fulfilled the highest and best potential
of dance as an art form. It perfectly
realized my own aesthetic and conception of what dance should be. Of all the dance performances I have seen, I
would say this was the best one. It had
everything. The dancers, of course, were
superb, as always at the San Francisco Ballet, but this production was well
thought out with great intelligence. It
is a big concept. It has a broad narrative
line with numerous subplots. The story
is told in nonverbal language that can be easily followed by a viewer. The ballet was not about athleticism, or a
celebration of the physical beauty and grace of the body for its own sake, but
rather the body and its capacity for movement and communication are employed to
tell a story and create relationships between characters that evolve and change
throughout the drama. It was dynamic as
well as emotionally and intellectually challenging. The music was perfectly suited to the dancing
and to the action on stage, which I always notice and appreciate. The lighting, the sets, the staging, and the
costumes were highly imaginative, and beautifully done. It is a visually enchanting spectacle. Large bouquets to Choreographer Christopher
Wheeldon, Librettist Craig Lucas, Scene and Costume designer Julian Crouch, and
Lighting Designer Natasha Katz, Tree and Carriage Designer Basil Twist, and
Projection Designer Daniel Brodie, and the entire staff. This show is a first rate accomplishment.
The production draws more from the Grimm tradition rather
than from Perrault, but it incorporates creative, original innovations that
give it a uniqueness and individuality that in my opinion is superior to the
older versions of the tale. The San
Francisco Ballet version has complexity.
The characters have depth in contrast to the fairy tale characters,
which tend to be simplified and cartoonish.
Following the Grimm version, the story centers around a tree
growing out of Cinderella's mother's grave.
There is no fairy god mother in this story. Instead four Fates shadow Cinderella
throughout the performance, watching over her, encouraging her, and guiding her
in the right direction at crucial times.
There are a variety of wonderfully costumed fairies and animal
characters who support Cinderella. Cinderella's father remains a player
throughout the story, sometimes protecting her from the harshness and excess of
the stepmother. In the fairy tale
versions the father seems to disappear and abandons Cinderella to her fate at
the hands of her stepfamily. This tends
to gut the story of its emotional sense.
It makes it seem as if stepmothers and stepsisters are inherently evil
or hostile toward their stepsiblings, and this is not necessary the case nor
inevitable, particularly if the father is absent or dead. It also leaves one wondering how the father
could simply abandon his natural daughter from his first wife to the cruelty of
his new family. However, once it is
realized that the hostility between Cinderella and her stepfamily is rooted in a
sexual rivalry for the father, then the whole story makes perfect sense -- but
most versions of the story will not deal with this. Cinderella becomes sanitized and
desexualized.
I liked the San Francisco Ballet's concept because it moves
in the direction of keeping the story emotionally and sexually alive by
retaining the father as an involved player throughout the story. He is at the ball with everyone else and
dances with all three of his daughters.
It would have helped if this had been a little more overtly sexual, but
it worked. The conflict and the
implications could be discerned.
When the father remarries and the stepmother and her two
daughters are brought to meet Cinderella for the first time, they offer her a
bouquet of flowers which Cinderella contemptuously throws on the ground. This action seems to set up the antagonism
between Cinderella and her stepfamily. On
the other hand, was the bouquet a genuine gesture, or a cynical act of
hypocrisy? This was an interesting twist
that contrasted with the usual the versions of the fairy tale where the
animosity between the stepfamily and Cinderella is attributed to the inherent
cruelty of the stepsisters and their mother, which is rather simpleminded. In the San Francisco Ballet's conception the arriving
stepfamily appears to reach out to Cinderella and she rejects them. Why?
Obviously, because she had her father all to herself and their arrival
brings her exclusive possession of his attention and affection to an end. This involves Cinderella in creating her own
predicament.
If anything, I think Cinderella should have been even more
of a bitch. This is a nasty, ugly sexual
rivalry and should not be cast as a struggle between Good and Evil, as it
traditionally is. The San Francisco
Ballet moves a long step in the right direction, but I think it could be emphasized
even more. I liked that in this
performance the sexual attraction between the father and the step sisters as
well as Cinderella was evident, and Cinderella's relationship with the Prince
has palpable sexual overtones. During
the ball they disappear several times from the stage as if going off for a
tryst and then return for more dancing. This
Cinderella was not a sanitized, innocent, passive player being helplessly
pushed around. She had some character
and some strength of her own. Nor are
the stepsisters and their mother uniformly evil and cruel. Cinderella is able to form a somewhat
friendly rapport with the younger sister, Clementine. The Prince also becomes more interesting in
this retelling. He is not an idealized
Prince Charming devoid of personality, but is something of a rogue who causes
his parents, the King and Queen, consternation.
He has a companion, Benjamin, who takes a fancy to the step sister,
Clementine, and in the end, they, too, marry in a sort of double wedding.
At the end of the first act when the animals dress
Cinderella in her gown for the ball there was no pumpkin carriage (that comes
from Perrault). Instead Cinderella
disappears into an opening in the trunk of the tree -- which looks remarkably
like a vulva -- and shortly emerges transformed by the forest animals into a princess
in a splendid carriage being whisked off to the ball. It is a very powerful,
effective scene.
In the final scene the reconciliation between Cinderella and
her stepmother is very modest. She
plants a small kiss on her stepmother's cheek, but it shows considerable
restraint. It is almost
perfunctory. However, it is less
grotesque than having the birds peck out their eyes as in the Grimm
version.
Altogether the San Francisco Ballet's recasting of
Cinderella goes several steps beyond the Grimm Brothers in quality and
emotional sophistication. I hope it
replaces the Disney version in the popular consciousness. It was truly a privilege to see it. As far as dance performances go, this is as
good as it gets. It makes me grateful to
be living San Francisco where it is possible to go out in the evening and see a
performance of this high quality. If you
can go out in the evening and see something of this caliber and imaginative
power, you know you are in one of the best places in all the world to be. This is why we live here.
Yolen, Jane (1982)
America's Cinderella. In Cinderella: A Casebook. Edited by Alan Dundes. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 294-306.