Ratmansky's Cinderella by New York Times

Romantic Introduction, With Revitalizing Touches

Mariinsky Ballet in ‘Cinderella,’ Under Alexei Ratmansky

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Mariinsky Ballet: Konstantin Zverev and Diana Vishneva during the New York premiere on Saturday night of “Cinderella,” choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 

On Saturday night, the Mariinsky Ballet presented, as the second offering of its two-week season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s production, set in this century with sets byIlya Utkin and Yevgeny Monakhov, and costumes by Elena Markovskaya. This is his 2002 production of this score; his 2013 version for the Australian Ballet is extensively revised. This Mariinsky one shows how freshly novel a storyteller Mr. Ratmansky can be — and how immature his gifts were in 2002. (Only with “The Bright Stream” in 2003 and “Russian Seasons” in 2006 did he break through into eminence.)When Cinderella meets her prince at the ball, she has no immediate reason to know he’s royal; and he has spotted her not because she’s some magical arrival in a glass coach but because she seems a pretty but bewildered girl who could use some help in these unfamiliar surroundings. When he hunts for her after the ball, he gets waylaid in both female and male brothels (decorous examples of each; unlike the hero of at least one other “Cinderella,” he never loses his virtue). On finally finding her — she’s tucked away on an upper landing at her home — he pulls himself up by his arms to behold her; then he pursues her up the stairs. And there’s plenty of Mr. Ratmansky’s gift for comic caricature (here and in so many ballets reminiscent of the brilliant cartoonlike vivacity ofLeonide Massine). After the stuffy self-conscious rigor of the company’s opening two performances of “Swan Lake” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week, you feel what a breath of naturalness Mr. Ratmansky is to this company. His stepsisters — not nasty — are rapacious and feckless; their bullying mother rules the roost with monstrous energy; Cinderella’s father is a melancholy, weak drunk. The court abounds with fashionistas, who fortunately declare that the new girl Cinderella is simply too marvelous. Still, Mr. Ratmansky’s storytelling here is uneven. His Fairy Godmother stays like a benevolent bag lady throughout: So why does she help Cinderella find love at the top of society? In what ways are his four male Season fairies remotely seasonal? At what point does Cinderella realize that her beau, the only man not wearing a tie at the ball, is the prince?

Much more crucial, Mr. Ratmansky’s response to the dance elements of the score is patchy. The dances for the four Seasons are forgettable. The superlative, dark waltz with which Act I ends, and which is woven into the Act II ballroom scene after Cinderella’s arrival, is the score’s most substantial and famous dance number. But here, despite some promising moments, it never receives its choreographic due. Too many other numbers end just as the dancers run off into the wings. At no point does Mr. Ratmansky investigate Prokofiev’s more remarkable rhythms. Though there are charming dance moments for Cinderella in all three acts, not one of them is sustained for the duration of a number. Mr. Ratmansky is well known for presenting most of his productions with multiple casts, and often for allowing remarkably diverse interpretations. Even so, it was surprising to see the stylistic extent to which the Cinderellas of the renowned Diana Vishneva (on Saturday) and Anastasia Matvienko(on Sunday) differed. Ms. Vishneva let us know she was a sophisticated ballerina dancing in a disingenuously anti-classical way. She never once let her beautiful limbs arrive in a finished position; instead she kept luxuriating their curving transitions between A and B. (Every tendril-like arc was more polished than a finished line would have been.) Likewise, her wide-eyed simulation of little-lamb-lost innocence was unconvincing and, soon, tiresome. Ms. Matvienko — even though she, like Alexander Sergeyev as her prince, wore unnecessarily heavy eye makeup — showed both the unspoiled charm of the girl in the kitchen and the untutored yet grand eloquence of her radiance in the ballroom. Her story was always in evolution; in pas de deux, she showed each different stage of feeling. Both Mr. Sergeyev andKonstantin Zverev (Ms. Vishneva’s prince) are polished young men who play this role with dashes of wry humor and no-nonsense purposefulness, but between Ms. Matvienko and Mr. Sergeyev you felt many points of connection, whereas Mr. Zverev’s charms foundered. Cinderella’s stepmother, with flame-orange hair cut in a bob, also changed considerably according to the performer. Ekaterina Kondaurova was aggressively glamorous, like Marlene Dietrich enjoying herself in a villainess role; Anastasia Petushkova, an even more dominating hoyden, was like Carol Burnett. Either way, however, the comedy of this character and her daughters is just a series of gags, not all well timed; the more organic humor Mr. Ratmansky found in the many characters of “The Bright Stream” is missing here.