As Sarah Frater reminded us in the Evening Standard:
Christmas ballet officially began at the weekend with The Royal Ballet’s wonderful production of Cinderella. Frederick Ashton’s 1948 super-traditional version of the classic fairytale is perfect family fare , with filigree dancing, clear story-telling and romping good humour from the Step Sister. It also has one of theatre’s best “switch scenes” — you really can’t work out how Cinderella goes from party princess to scullery tatters at the stroke of midnight.
Alina Cojocaru was set to dance the title role, but injury meant Marianela Nunez took over.
Judith Flanders on the Arts Desk writes
The good news is Marianela Nuñez. Always a lovely dancer, in Ashton she just glows. No one could be more suited than she to Ashton’s fiendishly difficult petite batterie, those tiny, beaten, viciously fast steps; no one could be more suited than she to Ashton’s light, bright jumps: with her sunny temperament and lovely punchy ballon Nuñez rises (literally) to the choreography’s demands.
And Sarah Crompton in the Telegraph added
But Cinderella still wove its spell. The corps de ballet danced with all the precision the soloists lacked. As the Stepsisters, both Gary Avis (the big, bossy one) and Philip Mosley (his timid sister) were funny enough to have the children in the audience laughing with open-throated delight. But they caught the unpleasantness, too – and the misery of the close when they are excluded from the happiness Cinderella has won.
Marianela Nuñez turned the heroine from lonely victim into spirited survivor. In the dingy kitchen, she looked quite capable of protecting herself from any unpleasantness. But she is a skilled interpreter of all the pretty, intricate steps that Ashton created. She turns in circles all the time – first, around the room, when dancing with an imaginary lover in the shape of a broomstick, then, when the real thing comes along in the form of Rupert Pennefather, she rotates around him, as if frightened to be still.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.
