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The Michigan Ballet Academy is pleased to invite you to experience the beloved ballet Cinderella, with original choreography by Artistic Director, Nikoloz Makhateli. Students from the Academy will be performing this version of the world’s most beloved story on April 28 and 29, 2018 at the Jenison Center for the Arts.
There is probably no other fairy tale as captivating as that of Cinderella, the story of a young woman covered in ashes who transforms from rags to riches with the help of a fairy godmother and a bit of magic.
The earliest known version of this story dates back to the 1st Century BCE and was recorded by the Greek historian Strabo. The version of Cinderella we all know and love was published by the French author Charles Perrault in 1697, but most of us probably call to mind the 1950s animated Disney film and images of Cinderella’s animal friends Jaq and Gus, and her evil (and mostly silly) stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella.
Lesser known is the ballet version of Cinderella, originally presented in 1893 by renowned choreographers Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Enrico Cechetti to the music of Baron Borish Fitinhoff-Schell. The score of Baron Borish Fintinhoff-Schell was never published and in 1940 and 1944 the music now associated with the ballet was composed by Sergei Prokofiev. It is his most popular composition, and was first performed in 1945 by the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow.
The ballet Cinderella is full of humor, with the stepsisters and stepmother traditionally played in travesty and a disastrous dancing lesson. The fairy godmother summons the fairies of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter to help transform Cinderella’s rags into a beautiful ball gown, and twelve gnomes dance around the clock to repeatedly remind Cinderella of her fairy godmother’s warning that when the midnight hour strikes, everything will revert to its original form.
A treat for the entire family, do not miss this full-length production of the classical ballet. For ticket information, visit www.michiganballet.org. Tickets range in price from $12-$18.
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