Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo Cendrillon Review
November 17, 2022 | Kennedy Center – Washington, D.C., USA
Opening night for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo’s premiere performance of Cendrillon in Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was everything you imagine Monaco to be – dignified, precise, and grand. This company and the nation it calls home brought big ideas and the artistic experience to America’s home for the performing arts. And the audience readily enjoyed the ride.
Patrons entering the middle door into the Center’s Hall of States were greeted with an international photography exhibit – 32 photographs from Humanity and Wildlife: crossed destinies, shared territories. The exhibit is made possible by The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Environmental Photography Award, launched in 2021, and reflects the tensions between mankind and nature to raise awareness for change. It is a collaboration between the Embassy of Monaco and the Kennedy Center.
Continuing to the Center’s Eisenhower Theatre, patrons readied for the ballet performance cultivated by H.R.H. of Hanover, Princess Caroline to millions around the world, as she is the President of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.
Founded in 1985, this company has been under the direction of Jean-Christophe Maillot, the edgy innovator, since 1993. Maillot’s vision is an anchor of the company’s international brand and presence, and he’s created forty ballets for it, including tonight’s radical re-telling of the classic Cinderella story, debuted in Monte Carlo in April of 1999.
Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo Cendrillon Trailer
Gone are the pumpkins, carriages, and blonde up-dos in this Cinderella story, divided into three Acts, with an Intermission after the Act I, a pause between Acts II and III.
Legends created this inversion on the classic, starting with the scenography of Ernest Pignon-Ernest. The residue of his renowned talents in political, public art is ever-present in this production, including the utilitarian usage of periodic words projected on the otherwise stark and mobile set pieces. The staging supports the efficient, effective lighting by Dominique Drillot. These two elements set the stage for the story’s wide range of emotions.
Jérôme Kaplan often defines costuming for me, and his white dress for this ballet evidences why. The dress, on display in the Kennedy Center lobby, shows Kaplan’s nuanced mastery form and style, fabric and stitching.
The ballet opens with Cendrillon, the character, holding her late mother’s white dress, and the dress is an integral part of the story. Cendrillon wears it; her mother wears it, and Cendrillon and her father both, independently, dance with it. The dress becomes a character. It is the ballast for all symbols and messages in the ballet.
We hear a lot of talk about the post-apocalyptic pieces in this production, of course, from the bandaged heads of the Stepmother and her two daughters to the outrageous costume fixtures that make the Stepmother appear to have a tail. And those elements really do underscore the idea of artifice as the counter to Cendrillon’s natural simplicity.
Sets, lighting, and costumes are still progressive after more than twenty years in production. All are bold enough to withstand the powerful, booming score of Sergei Prokofiev, the Russian-born composer of the last century who gave us Romeo and Juliet and Peter and the Wolf scoring as well.
And these huge, distinct names seem necessary to support the rapid, expansive, and symbolic choreography of company driver Maillot.
Maillot’s style might not be for everyone, but as we see in his video of the Company for 2022’s World Ballet Day, he is driven to perfection through team building and is clearly at the helm of his team of fifty dancers.
He was in the audience on this night, offering quick applause and a “Bravo!” alongside the rest of the cheering patrons.
There’s something special about a company with such a strong anchor. Imagine having your choreographer – the creator of this ballet – working with you every day after having worked with every production of the ballet since the debut. That type of local knowledge shows in every layer of the production, and the dancers are free to execute, execute, execute.
In a ballet so replete with pantomime, hitting the gags is key to a believable performance. From Simone Tribuna’s Prince to the pair of Pleasure Superintendents and all who wove in and out of their paths, everyone was on the mark, and everyone held the mark.
Alessandra Tognoloni’s seasoned performance as Cendrillon served her motif of authenticity well. When paired with fellow Italian Tribuna as her Prince, their moves were effortless and honest and precise.
The ballet’s introduction promises to explore “themes of loss and learning to live beyond that loss.”
The mission was accomplished by the repeated twining of Cendrillon and her Prince alongside her father and late mother, personified as a fairy. When we see the couples dance together, a double pas de deux, the idea is magnified against the voluminous score.
The regal Matej Urban and his wife/fairy, Marianna Barabás, were athletic and intimate. Their performance mirrored the possible for young Cendrillon and the Prince. The twining of Cendrillon and her Prince with her Father and the Fairy sends the message that love, in its simplicity, really can conquer all.
This version of Cinderella, or, the French, Cendrillon, focuses on the same themes as the traditional story – love brings redemption. But in this story, the Prince must give up the world of artifice and come to Cinderella’s life of simplicity. It is he, not she, who is whisked away to a new life, a life evoked by the golden, bare foot of a pure young woman not shrouded in the trappings of an artificial world.
Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, part carnivalesque and pantomime, part post-postmodern storyteller, is, at its core, a troupe of trained, disciplined professionals who underscored every trope tonight and will, no doubt, get up and do the same thing again tomorrow.
Cendrillon continues at the Kennedy Center through Sunday’s matinee performance. The accompanying wildlife photography exhibit remains on display through this Saturday.
Featured Photo for this Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo Cendrillon review of Alessandra Tognolini and Francesco Mariottini by Alice Blangero.
