ARTS . Dance Review

Ugly Stepsister

Moscow Festival Ballet, April 11, Annenberg Center


	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Apr 17, 2007

The glory days are over. To think a ballet company calling itself Moscow Festival Ballet and claiming links to both of Russia's great troupes, the Bolshoi and the Kirov, could be as dreary as the tired, overworked outfit that presented Cinderella at Annenberg last Wednesday night. Anyone expecting even a glimmer of the glamour and technical brilliance associated with these Russian institutions could only be disappointed.

This is a touring company making a one-night stand here, then packing up the painted flats that pass for scenery, stuffing its mish-mash of ill-assorted costumes into trunks, and catching the plane for its next one-night stand. The program didn't even bother to list casting. It simply gave names of dancers who might, or might not, be Cinderella and the prince. Individual performers apparently were of no importance in what was more a novelty event than a ballet. Since none of the dancers rose above the level of adequate, it ultimately did not matter.

Cinderella, the classical ballet that was given this Monty Python performance, is not one of the great pieces of the ballet canon. It is considered a major work largely because of its famous Prokofiev score. Ballet companies often play Cinderella for laughs, with the convention being to have the wicked stepmother and both ugly stepsisters danced by men. Moscow Festival Ballet had a man dancing the stepmother, and two slight and pretty girls as the stepsisters, thus making a travesty of a famous travesty. The event was advertised as a three-act ballet. Hooray for false advertising. The first act was a full, boring hour of orange-and-red costumes and lackluster dancing. It would be unthinkable to take in two more hours of this. However, it turned out MFB hadn't just edited Prokofiev's famous score; they'd shortened the ballet, too. So the second and third acts became one speedy little finale. Backstage, the tech folk were probably already packing up. Sergei Radchenko, the former Bolshoi dancer who heads this outfit, ought to be ashamed of himself.

Moscow Festival Ballet, April 11, Annenberg Center