Cinderella Goes Modern

By Martha Duffy

A.B. T. 's new production has some fun with the fairy tale

For American Ballet Theater, its new million-dollar Cinderella is a crucial venture. In the past year, A.B.T. has been shaken by deficits, and in the consequent scuffles between the board of directors and management, Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov offered with some asperity to resign. The troupe set out on its national tour last December with a lot to prove to creditors, audiences and itself.

Cinderella is not an obvious banner to follow into battle. In one form or another, the ballet dates back at least to 1813, but it has never been a truly popular theme. For A.B.T. the magic has worked: Cinderella has been a virtual sellout across the country, and, opening the company's two month New York City season last week, it proved to be a sumptuous, buoyant, surprisingly sophisticated show.

For Baryshnikov, who will remain as artistic director, Cinderella is a break with his Russian heritage. So far, he has staged two full-length ballets for A.B.T, The Nutcracker and Don Quixote; both of them are lively but well-mannered variations of traditional Russian models. That he wanted something bolder this time became apparent when he chose as co-choreographer Peter Anastos, best known as the former guiding spirit (and as Olga Tchikaboumskaya, prima ballerina) of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male travesty troupe. In such parodies as Go for Barocco (Balanchine) and Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet (Robbins), Anastos has poked amiable, witty fun at the conventions of classical ballet.

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, a bit dry and out for fun.

There are plenty of ballet jokes, but they work for non-fans too. The dancing master who instructs the ugly stepsisters starts his lesson with the opening phrase of Balanchine's Theme and Variations. The 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 fouettes in Cinderella.

Though the choreographers cooperated on all aspects of the piece, Baryshnikov's mark is on the corps de ballet work in the ballroom scene, and he has clearly progressed since the tame groupings in the Nutcracker seven years ago. Prokofiev's waltzes are drenched in melody, yet edged with dark, thrilling shivers, and the choreography exploits their almost crude drama.

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 as big as the Metropolitan Opera House. Adding insult to neglect, Baryshnikov and Anastos even bring on a glamorous masked lady (Leslie Browne) whom the Prince (Patrick Bissell) mistakes for Cinderella. The idea may be a bow to Odile in Swan Lake or several figures in Balanchine, but whatever the source, love's counterfeit has more vitality than its true image.

In truth this is the Prince's ballet--call it Prince Charming? Cinderfella?--and in an enterprise that seeks to shed conventional trappings, that may not be all bad. It should be noted that in his squabble with the A.B.T. board, Baryshnikov insisted that his presence onstage should not be counted upon for fund raising, so he must take satisfaction in producing a solid hit in which he has not yet appeared. But even if he never dances the role, 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 jetes. 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 in 1984 than the standard, hand-wringing Adonis. --By Martha Duffy