The final costumes for Cinderella began arriving at Birmingham Royal Ballet this week, from makers across the country. While outside it was grey and foggy, the wardrobe corridor was suddenly awash with a rainbow of colour!
Category: Pictures
Four students joined us last week for stage rehearsals. Among their roles were those of the mice which the Fairy Godmother transforms into attendants, to escort Cinderella to the Prince’s ball. Here you can see them preparing in the wings before taking to the stage in full costume!
Remember we showed you some prop designs which included a plate of cakes? Here’s the finished product!
The Birmingham Royal Ballet technical department have been hard at work today, as the sets and cloths for Cinderella arrived at Birmingham Hippodrome. Joined by the venue’s own team, it was the first of many long, long days of work for everybody backstage, in preparation for the ballet’s premiere on 24 November.
Here you can see tutus for our new production of Cinderella, which have been hung upside down on the rail to maintain the ‘bounce’ of the fabric. While the undersides are plain white, the tops are elaborately decorated to shine and sparkle under the theatre lights. Even upside-down, you can see hints of the silver materials which have been used to embellish the upper levels of the skirt.
To achieve the hair-raising look of many of John MacFarlane’s character designs, wigs are created by outside companies before being styled by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Wigmaster Henry Menary and Assistant Lauren Fitzgerald.
Above you can see one of the hairpieces as it arrives at Company HQ, coloured but unstyled before Henry wraps it in curlers. Below you can see examples of some finished items, including the lofty wig for one of Cinderella’s sisters as seen in this fitting gallery!
Finally, here’s Henry himself, waving a big hello to his brother in Peru!
Birmingham Royal Ballet Principals Gaylene Cummerfield and Carol-Anne Millar are creating the roles of Cinderella’s sisters.
‘Both are great with comedy,’ said David of his choices. ‘I’ve worked with both before – both did E=mc² and Carol-Anne did The Shakespeare Suite – and they were very good to work with. They’ve also both danced in a lot of my other works, so I’m very comfortable working with them for this production. Importantly, I believe they’re also comfortable in demanding character roles like this.’
As David says, the roles of the sisters are demanding, with the Director citing them as ‘easily the biggest, apart from the title role.’ And the scenes that they share with Cinderella [Elisha Willis], and with the stepmother [Marion Tait] – are ones that David is enjoying working on.
‘With those four women together in the studio there’s a great atmosphere, and a professionalism. There’s a real sense that we can make something unique.
‘They’re very intense those scenes, just those four characters together. The stepmother isn’t a massive role in terms of her dancing, but she has an undeniable influence over the whole story. A lot of the story is just these four women together, and outside of the classical material their scenes really are the heart of the piece.’
Birmingham Royal Ballet gets onto Birmingham Hippodrome’s main stage next week, ahead of the opening night on 24 November. In the meantime, every department is ensuring they are ready for this final intensive period, with each individual element of the production planned and documented…
In Cinderella, the hardships that the heroine endures are what give the ending its power, as she escapes the isolation of the squalid kitchen and the cruelty of the ‘wicked’ stepmother. Where some of David’s previous narrative ballets (such as Cyrano and Edward II) have seen a character rise and fall, Cinderella sees charts the protagonist’s steady rise as she rediscovers hope.
But in the world of ballet, happy endings (The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker) can seem outnumbered by tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, Swan Lake). Choreographically, is joy as interesting as grief or turmoil? David Bintley believes so.
‘I don’t think that joy is a permanent state,’ he says when we put the question to him. ‘It is something which is very, very brief. It’s in fleeting moments between everything else in life; our daily episodes of work, distraction, interest, fun, whatever. Contentment is more common, calmness or acceptance, yes; but joy to me is something that is above and beyond, it’s a crest of a moment, a climax. And it’s something that is probably more aspired to than achieved.’
‘But it’s certainly something that Cinderella attains, and is possibly all the more powerful because she daren’t have hoped to. And choreographically, I would say that beauty and serenity are joy in movement, and so of course are interesting.
‘The suggestion on stage at the end of the piece is not of a tangible place, but more of the Prince and Cinderella together, preserved in a state of bliss. It’s the end of the darkness, the moment of the sun rising after the night. Nothing matters but those two people in this one particular moment of joy, where she’s escaped all of the hardships of the world that she’s known before.’
Here you can see images of two parts of the set for Cinderella’s kitchen – the sink and a cupboard both now laden with pots and pans!
