The Kasatkina and Vasilyov State Academic Classical Ballet Theatre
(Moscow Classical Ballet)
The story of the draggle-tail girl called Cinderella is one of the most popular fairy tales all over the world. Cinderella was one of Prokofiev’s favorite works. In November of 1945, he wrote: “The main thing I wanted to show in /Cinderella’s music was Cinderella and the Prince’s poetic love, the rise and bloom of their feeling, thorns in its way and a dream coming true. I wanted to make the spectator feel with their sorrows and joys. I was composing Cinderella in the tradition of old classical ballet”/.
It was premiered at the State Academic Theatre of Classical Ballet in March of 1993. The main parts were performed by young soloists Lyudmila Vasilieva and Ivan Korneyev, winners of the International Competition.
In all their productions Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyov first of all look out for the music. It is the music that dictates the image of a production and its choreographic style. In the traditional form, too, they can state their own unique idea. In this production the vibrancy of a human feeling, conveyed by means of classical choreography, goes together with fabulous dance fantasy and with ironically grotesque plastique of the character dancers.
The symphonic style of Prokofiev’s ballet score was slightly shaded by the pomposity of the first scenic version of the ballet staged at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1945. Other versions, based on the grotesque and irony in the musical features of the supporting characters, often lost the deep lyricismwhich is the soul of this piece.
However, it is neither the modesty of the draggle-tail girl, nor the character actors who make people laugh, and nor the pomposity of the ball that are on the front line of the production by Kasatkina and Vasilyov (but still, all of this you can see in the ballet), but the keen anticipation of a miracle and the magnificent transformation of Cinderella. This transformation is possible thanks to the Fairy’s magical help and the cut-glass slipper. Thus their interpretation appears to be the closest to Prokofiev’s idea.
