Word: cinderellas
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...never stopped studying dance, and her first heartbreak in life came when she grew too tall for the title role in the Washington School of Ballet production of Cinderella. On the advice of her teachers, Shirley at 16 shifted to musical comedy and traveled to New York City where she tried out for a production of Oklahoma! that toured the boroughs. She was cast as the center postcard girl in the ballet by a director who addressed her as, "Hey! You with the legs...
...Cinderella is neither parody nor camp extravagance, nor is it a conventional story ballet. The sets and costumes, by Santo Loquasto, are opulent, if heavy on glitter. The fairy tale is told straight, as indicated by Sergei Prokofiev's richly melodic score. But instead of emphasizing welling emotions and magic spells, the choreographers are brisk...
...girls are played by male dancers (Johan Renvall and Thomas Titone) performing, Tchikaboumskaya-style, on pointe. In the ballroom scene, Renvall even tosses off some free-swinging fouettes, a bow to the legendary Pierina Legnani, who stunned St. Petersburg in 1893 by doing 32 fouettés in Cinderella...
There is ample invention .in the production, but not all of it is fully realized. Cinderella is provided with a pet cat (Gil Boggs) who neatly steals all his scenes. The stepsisters, lunging around in their toe shoes, are fun at first, but they have few bits of bright business and very little individuality. A similar blandness mars the heroine. The choreographers seem to have more respect than affection for Cinderella, and the steps she is given are not memorable. Cynthia Gregory uses lovely floating balances and her skills as an actress to project the part through a theater...
...Baryshnikov's offhand drollery and mildly subversive comic presence animate the part. This Prince is not a romantic sufferer. He does his tricky opening variation with military smartness and preens before his eager court. In the third and strongest act, he leaps around the world in search of Cinderella in spectacular grand jetés. In the best vignette, he copes insouciantly with violent would-be princesses who wrestle with him for the precious slipper. A bit vain, lacking perhaps ideal royal tolerance, he is at heart a good egg, and better company for a full-length fairy tale...