He wondered if there were issues of manoeuverability for the dancer playing the part, which is indeed one contributing factor, as was a desire to move away from the pantomimic tone of previous productions of the story. The characters deserved to be laughed at, but they had to retain a realism in order for the threat that they posed to the heroine to be believable.

David himself explained another factor however. ‘There wasn’t a way of making their hands or the heads any fatter, so if we’d made the bodies bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually the character would have looked ridiculously out of proportion. We can pad every other part of the suit, but not the hands and especially not the head.

Here’s another chance to see one of David’s earliest video diaries, recorded nearly a year ago, in which he discusses the roles of the sisters.

If you’d like to buy the DVD, you can do so (region 1) either through the Company shop by clicking here, or via Amazon by clicking here.

You can also buy Cinderella on Blu-ray through the Company shop by clicking here.

The original design for the invitation was composed and hand-painted by John Macfarlane, and from this master copy duplicates were made for the various performances throughout the tour.

‘I did a radio show a few years ago,’ he noted, ‘for which my seat and microphone were positioned within the orchestra. It was a concert of music for dance, and one of the things that the musicians played during was a suite from Cinderella. Even if I hadn’t been such a fan of the music – which of course I was – the impact of such a performance would have converted me instantly. It was a thrilling occasion.’

‘It’s a remarkable score,’ he explained, ‘because while it’s built around the framework of the 19th-century ballets, with the requisite waltzes and variations, there’s an additional complexity to even the simplest looking solos.’

‘In addition, it’s a score of huge extremes. While most of the Tchaikovsky scores encompass a single idea – Grandeur for Sleeping Beauty, doom and foreboding for Swan Lake – Cinderella has this extraordinary range of emotion. It has everything from heart-stopping pathos to really quite crude, almost Soviet humour. And at the root of everything there’s always a little kick that knocks it off-kilter; nothing’s ever four square like a Tchaikovsky variation. And I find that fascinating. As a choreographer, and as a performer, you’ve got to be alert all the time.’

Click on the image below to open up the timeline, which is divided into seasons, each showing our Birmingham headquarters at a different time of year. It works using the Google Maps interface, so you’ll be able to zoom in and out and scroll left and right as you would do with an online map.

Select each of the red teardrop markers to open balloons containing images, videos and diary entries showing what was happening in the building during each of the seasons leading up to the premiere. We’ve also included Spring 2011, so we can post updates relating to this year’s final touring performances of Cinderella at the London Coliseum, 29 March-2 April (NEXT WEEK!)

Click on the image below to get started:

Entitled Transformation and Revelation, the exhibition aims to provide an insight into how an idea becomes a design, and how it then reaches the stage in a realistic form. Around 200 exhibitors are contributing work.

John Macfarlane’s materials – selected by the designer himself – include the original modelbox for Cinderella, and drawings of many of the characters.

Transformation and Revelation is open weekdays from 9.30am to 8pm and weekends between 10am and 5pm between March 18 and April 16 2011. Entrance to this exhibition is free to the general public.

With thanks to Glass Slipper Productions.

Here you can see the newly designed poster, featuring the heroine in her carriage and the Fairy Godmother waving her off to the Prince’s palace. We’ve included a few more images along the bottom showing other scenes too.

We’ve also been able to add a few more stars to the sky above her head – specifically in the top left of the poster(!)

With Cinderella going on tour this month to Salford and Plymouth, we asked how he hopes his latest work has stimulated the Company.

‘It’s a ballet with a lot of roles for women, rather than the men,’ David says, ‘Cinderella herself is a nice role for the girls because it’s quite varied – not only technically, because they’re working barefoot and en pointe, and with big set pieces in the second act – but also because of the long passages where they’re just alone by themselves. They have to create and maintain a character that really endears itself to the audience, who have got to empathise with Cinderella, otherwise the show doesn’t work. It’s really carried on her shoulders.

‘Then there are a lot of subsidiary characters like the sisters, which are comedy roles, and there aren’t a lot of those for women in ballet. I feel that these characters work: there’s a freedom in them that allows the dancers to add their own personality, but there’s a good solid framework and the audience gets the jokes.

‘Then there are the Seasons, which are challenging solos full of difficult steps. They’re deliberately difficult, I didn’t want to make them easy. And I’ve tried to get a number of the girls into those roles from Principals to Artists. We’ve already had Nao [Sakuma] as Autumn, and Natasha [Oughtred] as Spring, and Elisha [Willis] as Winter. All three of these are also dancing Cinderella in other shows. But I’ve also cast Artists like Yvette [Knight] and Kristen [McGarrity] and Delia [Mathews], all of whom I wanted to challenge. And they’ve responded brilliantly.’