Matthew Bourne, widely hailed as Britain’s most popular and successful choreographer, will bring his new ballet, a revolutionary version of Sergei Prokofiev’s classical Cinderella, to the Chekhov International Theater Festival in Moscow on May 25.
Bourne staged Cinderella as a classical war-time romance set in London during the Second World War.
“I’ve read that (Prokofiev) had written it during the Second World War… and I thought what if that’s in the music, what if I can hear that?” he said while retelling his new classic fairy-tale ballet. Bourne believes putting the idea of Cinderella in a war-time setting worked incredibly well. “Cinderella is a story about people falling in love very quickly, losing each other and then finding each other is very much a war-time story,” he said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
Cinderella, one of the most expensive projects at the Chekhov Festival with its 25 dancers, large sets and hundreds of costumes will hold 16 performances in Moscow giving many people the opportunity to come and see what Bourne describes as a spectacular and exciting show.
A popularizer of dance in Britain and regularly invited by the queen to various functions, Bourne does not rule out that he might be producing something at the Bolshoi Theater one of these days. With new versions of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker classics, Dorian Gray, and finally Cinderella, he has plenty to offer to the Bolshoi. His only requirement is the dancers should be equally good actors because good acting is crucial for his dancing pieces.
