Cinderella is suddenly popping up again, in the ballet world, a Broadway productiion and Disney film in the works.
There are thousand of versions of Cinderella, the story, in existence throughout the world From the Brothers Grimm to Walt Disney, comparing some of the most popular tales reveals the depth and complexity of the Cinderella story and character.
The first written record of the tale appeared in Greece during the 1st century B.C. It described a girl in ancient Egypt who’s shoe is stolen by a passing eagle. The eagle takes the shoe to Memphis and drops it in the lap of the Pharaoh. The king is so overcome by the beauty and daintiness of the slipper that he orders a search for the maiden! Of course, this story was part of the tradition of oral storytelling long before it was ever written down. There are other histories from ancient Greece that describe the maiden of this story as a slave who is freed by the king. The similarities leads some scholars to attribute this story as the first appearance of our little cinder girl.
The first version of the story to closely resemble what we know today appeared in China - The story of Ye Xian tells the tale of a young woman whose mother is killed by her stepmother and step sister. Her mother is reincarnated as a fish who helps the maiden prepare for the New Year’s festival. At the festival, she is discovered by her step-family and loses her shoe as she runs away. The kind discovers the shoe and falls in love with the maiden.
A story similar to the Chinese version exists in the Philippines, except that the mother is reincarnated as a crab.
There is a version in Vietnam as well, where a maiden is fooled out of her birthright by her step-family. The rest of the story follows the same plot with a festival and a king and a slipper, but this time the story ends with the CInderella character boiling her stepsister alive and then feeding her to her unwitting stepmother.
Of the Eastern versions of the story, the Korean version is the closest to what Americans and western culture recognize as Cinderella. There’s a fairy godmother figure, a celebration at the royal palace, and a slipper.
The Brothers' Grimm's Ashputtle
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Cinderella (Broadview Press, 1991), published in 1812, is as cunning as the character of the earlier tales. When Cinderella’s father asks her and her stepsisters what they would like him to bring back from the fair, the stepsisters ask for material possessions. Cinderella asks for the first twig that brushes his hat. She then plants the tree on her mother’s grave, and it grows into a magical tree.
Cinderella’s character shows patience and forethought as she waits for the perfect time to use the tree's power. She asks the wicked stepmother to attend the ball. When the stepmother gives her an impossible task to perform in exchange for her permission to attend the ball, Cinderella enlists the help of the birds in the sky. Finally, Cinderella completes the task and makes it to the ball.
Although there is no magic involved, Cinderella decides to conceal herself from the prince. In a significant departure from the Disney version, when Cinderella does reveal herself, it is as she really is, without the fancy clothes and jewels.
This version has a particularly bloody ending. The stepmother mutilates her daughters' feet in an attempt to force them into the slipper, and the stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by birds at Cinderella's wedding. In this fairy tale, the stepsisters are punished.
While there are thousands of versions of Cinderella tales throughout the world, Charles Perrault's "Cendrillon" provides the blueprint for many modern depictions.
In Charles Perrault's Cendrillon, the evolutionary footprints of her character make a clear departure from earlier tales where she is in charge of her own fate. These changes have culminated in how most people view Cinderella today.
Cendrillon
Charles Perrault's French Cinderella was published in Paris in 1697. This tale most closely resembles the mainstream versions of the story known to today's readers and viewers.
A Sweet, Docile, and Ever-Patient Cinderella
In the very first lines of Cendrillon, readers are presented with a character "of unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper." This Cinderella is one so docile and accepting of her situation that, “When the housework was all done, she would tuck herself away in the chimney corner to sit quietly among the cinders.” Here, we have a character who chooses to sit amongst the ashes, unlike her feisty ancestor who does so only out of force.
When the stepsisters are getting ready to attend the ball, who willingly advises them on their fashion and helps them with their hair? Cinderella, of course. This Cinderella bears the harsh treatment of her cruel stepmother and stepmothers with patience, perhaps with blind faith that good things come to those who wait. This Cinderella is clearly one who is powerless in the grip of circumstance, rather than one who struggles against it.
Cinderella's Strength is Her (Inner) Beauty
Perrault’s version is one that equates outer beauty with inner beauty as Cinderella “was as good as she was beautiful.” Although, other than beauty, this Cinderella does not possess numerous strengths to help change her fate, her destiny is altered for her by the help of magical mice, a fairy godmother and a lovestruck prince. Cinderella's help comes to her easily in the form of magic, rather than in acts of revelation and ingenuity.
If there is any doubt as to the intended moral of this tale, Perrault cinches it up nicely in his statement at the end extolling the female virtues of beauty, graciousness, good breeding, common sense, and the power of a magical blessing to change one's stars.
Here, the seeds are sown for the simplistic Hollywood fairy tale in which one only has to be kind, beautiful, and in the right place at the right time to secure a happy ending (Cinderella: Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass). The simplistic “rags to riches" blueprint in which beautiful helpless women are rescued and fulfilled by the happy ending of marriage lies in opposition to the energy and color of folk-fairy tales; in these original tales, characters are empowered by acts of self-determination, industriousness and powerful transformations.
The more important lesson of the fairy taleis that all of these cultures across all of these centuries have something in common – people aren’t really all that different, are they? We all want to hope and dream that even in the face some bad times, there is always the hope for something better on the horizon.
The Ballet
There are records of ballet versions of Cinderella being performed as early as 1813 in Vienna and 1822 in London, and of a notable production by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, Enrico Cecchetti for the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in 1893. With music by Baron Boris Fitinhof-Schell this version famously showcased Pierina Legnani and her 32 fouettées en tournant (a feat which would later be incorporated into the ballet Swan Lake) for the first time.
Using Sergei Prokofiev’s memorable score, Rostislav Zakharov’s 1945 ballet for the Bolshoi is seen as the first landmark Cinderella. Zakharov was the Bolshoi’s principal choreographer. He conceived the work at a time when the Soviets were in a celebratory mood: the German World War II invasion had been beaten back and a new ballet was needed which could serve as a metaphor for triumph over tyranny. Prokofiev and librettist Nikolai Volkov were guided by Charles Perrault‘s version of the story and influenced by Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores, which so perfectly matched the structure of Petipa’s choreography, to create a definitive score for Cinderella. Another factor that helped cement the success of Zakharov’s version was its association with Galina Ulanova who became legendary in the leading role, even though the ballet had been originally created on Olga Lepeshinskaya.
The Ashton version
Sir Frederick Ashton decided to focus on Prokofiev’s Cinderella in 1948 because he sympathized with the score’s intentions and emotions “the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, the birth and flowering of that love”. At that time, wartime restrictions had been lifted so the Company had enough resources to allow Ashton to realise a tribute to Petipa and experiment with his first full-length piece.
Ashton brought a very British flavor to the ballet. Unlike the Russian versions, he opted to feature the stepsisters as men portraying women to honor pantomime tradition. He also did away with the figure of the wicked stepmother and had Cinderella living with the ugly sisters and a feeble father instead. The spoiled stepsisters were originally played by Ashton and Robert Helpmann. Besides the comedy provided by the stepsisters and their entourage, there is plenty of room for drama and classicism, as in the scenes where Cinderella dances alone thinking of the happier days in the past, the solos for the season fairies and the waltz for the corps. There is a lush Grand Pas de Deux for the Prince and Cinderella which takes place at the ball in act 2, rather than at their wedding celebration in act 3 as would have been typical of Petipa. Ashton also decided to cut the Prince’s round-the-world search for Cinderella which was featured in the Russian versions. He had intended the ballet to be another vehicle for Margot Fonteyn but when injury kept her from stage the ballet was created using Moira Shearer with Michael Somes as her Prince, although Fonteyn took over the role when she was well.
Prokofiev's Score
Prokofiev began his work in 1940, but put it on hold during World War II to work on a more patriotic project, the opera War and Peace. In 1944, he resumed work on Cinderella after an Allied victory over Germany seemed imminent, and the work received a triumphant premiere on November 21, 1945 at the Bolshoi Theatre. Prokofiev and Volkov were guided by Charles Perrault‘s version of the story and influenced by Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores which so perfectly matched the structure of Petipa’s choreography. Prokofiev dedicated his composition to Tchaikovsky saying that he had structured Cinderella:
… "as a classical ballet with variations, adagios, pas de deux, etc… I see Cinderella not only as a fairy-tale character but also as a real person, feeling, experiencing, and moving among us
What I wished to express above all in the music of Cinderella was the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, the birth and flowering of that love, the obstacles in its path and finally the dream fulfilled."
Each act of the ballet has a different sonority. The first begins with “domestic life” scenes, with lean sounds and slowly progresses to magic as the fairy godmother comes to take Cinderella to the ball. A different atmosphere sets in for Act 2 which recalls and expands on the magic themes of act 1 to match the big ballroom numbers such as a lush waltz. The Prince and Cinderella dance a Pas de Deux representing love at first sight full of strings, light flutes and woodwind sounds. The mood shifts from romance to threat for the concluding number of the act. When Cinderella realizes she must leave just as the clock strikes midnight, powerful trombones and bass drum dominating the musical texture.
Prokofiev's somewhat heavy score is accompanied by some of the most unique and challenging choreography. Cinderella has a difficult variation, where she has to do a series of flickering turns in a circle, not just once but twice, and just watching is dizzying enough. The ball pas de deux with her Prince is an interesting one, containing references to clock hands and the countdown to her midnight curfew. The way she beats her legs together midair mimics the seconds ticking away, and all kinds of straight limbs in arabesque and penchée indicate time’s influence on her allotment with the Prince. It’s not as though the shapes tell you exactly what time it is, but the way they’re jumbled together is an obvious statement as to how she loses herself in time as she is falling in love.
Cinderella’s Variation: Alina Cojocaru
Cinderella Pas de Deux, with Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg:
By far, howver, it’s Cinderella’s entrance that is perhaps one of the finest moments, as she descends a staircase and simply bourées forward, The bourée being one of the most elementary of movements on pointe, it is often relegated as a way to get from A to B when a sort of shimmering, or floating effect is desired. Rarely does the bourée by itself get respect as a choreographed step.(Fokine’s The Dying Swan consists of all bourées, but is a piece that is told through the arms rather than the feet.)
Cinderella’s Entrance, with Margot Fonteyn:
San Francisco Ballet's choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella which premieres May 1, 2013, is yet another take on the famous tale, and one that should be widely successful. The haunting Prokofiev score will be there, and so will the romantic rapture. ( For a review, click Here
But Before getting down to choreographing, Wheeldon and his librettist, the playwright Craig Lucas, launched an intense investigation into "Cinderella" material, not just the existing ballets, but also the Rossini opera (from which he has borrowed one character), the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical (currently in revival on Broadway) and movie versions of the tale (he's partial to the Drew Barrymore film, "Ever After").
Wheeldon's principal inspiration has been the version of the tale by the Brothers Grimm, which he much prefers to the standard Charles Perrault recounting. "It's sugary, it's the Disney version," he says. "I remembered the Grimm from my childhood. It's naughty, a bit darker and more wicked."
This Cinderella is a young woman who makes choices in her life; she's not the poor, much beaten-down girl of convention. And as we lean her story of growing up, we also get a glimpse into the prince's. He's just a boy who wants to marry for love, not to father a dynasty.