Cinderella is given a wartime twist in Matthew Bourne’s ballet. He shares his inspirations with Laura Davis
PUMPKINS are redundant in Matthew Bourne’s blitz-time version of Cinderella, there are no shape-shifting rodents and the fairy godmother has no need of a wand.
Instead air raid sirens infiltrate Prokofiev’s ballet score, a Gene Kelly-esque angel oversees the girl’s transformation into belle of the ball and the handsome prince is a dashing RAF pilot.
“When I listened to the music I always felt I could hear the bombs dropping,” says Bourne. “I felt it sounded like a 1940s film score.”
Although the Russian composer modelled his work on earlier fairy story ballets such as those written by Tchaikovsky, Cinderella was actually completed between 1940 and 1944 when Europe was embroiled in World War.
“It just fitted,” says the choreographer.
“Time ticking away, you live for the day, you fall in love quickly, people getting lost and not knowing if they’re alive or dead, the idea of searching for someone – it’s all part of the Cinderella story, it wasn’t something I had to impose on it.”
When the show tours to the Liverpool Empire next month it will cement the theatre’s new relationship with Bourne that began early last year when he brought Swan Lake to the venue.
With the traditionally female corps de ballet transformed into a flock of cobs and a royal family that closely resembles our own, the 16-year-old production won Bourne a reputation for turning traditional dance on its head, while fulfilling his aim of “delivering all the moments in the story that people expect but in a different way”.
In 1997, two years after creating Swan Lake, he turned his attention to Cinderella, which was only performed in London and Los Angeles. The new production was revived last year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.
One element of the original that has changed is his reverence to the score.
“Prokofiev’s son, who was in his 70s, was in the rehearsal room with us drawing the dancers so I felt very bound to the music and that I couldn’t cut or re-order everything,” he explains, “I choreographed every note.
“Since then I have edited some bits although it’s still longer than the Royal Ballet version and act three is completely as written.”
