DANCE
The magic of fairy tales lives on in the Royal Ballet’s triumphant Cinderella revival.
WHEN FUMI KANEKO FIRST JOINED THE ROYAL BALLET, AGED 19, rehearsals were already underway for Cinderella. ‘I was so new, there wasn’t a role for me, so all I could do was watch,’ she says. That was 2011, and what would be the last staging of the classic story at the Royal Opera House for more than a decade. Now, to mark the 75th anniversary of the director and choreographer Frederick Ashton’s original interpretation, the company is finally making a grand return to Charles Perrault’s enduring tale. This time, Kaneko is no longer watching from the wings: she is Cinderella. ‘It’s just like in the fairy tale,’ she says, laughing. ‘Now I shall go to the ball.’ rehearsals were already underway for
For Kaneko, who became a principal dancer two years ago, Cinderella is her ‘full circle’ moment. The production carries with it a symbolic weight for the company itself too: when Ashton’s threeact piece premiered in 1948, with Moira Shearer and Michael Somes as the leads, it became the first full-length English classical ballet `to be performed at the Royal Opera House. Its stars received rapturous plaudits, as did Ashton for his intuitive direction (as well as his own comedic turn as one of the ugly stepsisters). In 1963, he would go on to succeed the Royal Ballet founder Ninette de Valois as its artistic director.
‘Frederick Ashton is so fundamental to us. In many ways, he defined how we perform,’ says the current director Kevin O’Hare, who counts himself one of the ‘lucky last generation’ to have danced under Ashton in the early 1980s. ‘Cinderella was when he was starting to reach the heights of his power as a storyteller. It is an amazing example of the classicism of his approach and shows exactly how impressive his musicality was.’
Ashton is known for the complexity of his dance sequences, as Kaneko explains. ‘He created a very specific way of moving,’ she says. ‘It is all about the precise use of the upper body and never being too athletic or too straight.’ She is on stage for almost the entire duration of the performance, making hers a particularly dema
