Australia Dancing - Cendrillon

Cendrillon

Shier, Spencer: Tatiana Riabouchinska in costume for 'Cendrillon' (Cinderella), Covent Garden Russian Ballet, 1939

The Cinderella fairy tale has inspired many notable ballets. Michel Fokine's Cendrillon, based on the 1697 version of the tale by Charles Perrault, was created for Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in July 1938 and brought to Australia by the touring Covent Garden Russian Ballet later that same year. Set to music by Frederic d'Erlanger, Fokine's one act production premiered on July 19, 1938 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Natalia Gontcharova's elaborate pre-Renaissance design was executed by Prince A Schervachidze (set) and Mme Karinska (costumes). The ugly sisters were performed 'en travestie', a feature that Frederick Ashton would also include in his 1948 ballet to the Prokofiev score, and Fokine introduced a role for Cinderella's cat. The opening cast featured Tatiana Riabouchinska as Cinderella, David Lichine as the Prince, Tamara Grigorieva as the Good Fairy, Marian Ladre and Algeranoff as the Ugly Sisters and Raisse Kouznetsova as the Cat.

The Australian premiere of the work took place on the opening night of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet tour - September 28, 1938 at His Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne. Riabouchinska, Grigorieva, Ladre, Algeranoff and Kouznetsova all performed their original roles, with Paul Petroff as the Prince. Geoffrey Hutton's praise in The Argus the following day was muted, describing the work as 'mimed action decorated with dances and comic characterizations'. While claiming that 'the translation from literature into movement has not been as complete as in some of [Fokine's] earlier masterpieces', he did note that 'the audience enjoyed it mightily for its effective solos and complex groupings, its familiar humour, and its lavish decor'.

Fokine's son, Vitale, includes an insightful description of his father's Cendrillon in Fokine: memoirs of a ballet master.

'The ballet was beautiful in its naive setting, its choreographic inventiveness, its excellent dancing, and with its pure form was especially suited for the younger public. It carried no profound message, nor did it introduce any new form of the dance. But it did have some comedy in the interpretation of the roles of the two ugly sisters, by men with excessive make-up, making their features still coarser and uglier.

To sum up, it was a ballet spectacle, with the emphasis on charm and lightness.'

Fokine's Cendrillon was last performed during the 1940-41 Ballets Russes tour of the United States.

Bibliography:

Michel Fokine, Anatole Chujoy (ed), Fokine: memoirs of a ballet master (London: Constable & Company, 1961); Vicente Garcia-Marquez, The Ballets Russes: Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo 1932-1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) ; Geoffrey Hutton, 'Brilliant opening: Ballet Season', The Argus, 29 September, 1938, p.3

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