Diane Parkes discovers why choreographer and director Matthew Bourne has set his latest ballet in the wartime Blitz.
It is Cinderella, but not as we know it. But then it is Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella. And just as he has taken classics such as Carmen, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and reinvented them, so too his Cinderella is a new take on the fairy tale.
Set during the London Blitz, poor old Cinderella is as busy dodging the German Luftwaffe as she is dealing with the ugly sisters.
But Matthew hopes the essence of the children’s classic comes through his dance.
“I started with the basic story of Cinderella that people already know. I want them to follow the train of events of the fairy tale but also give it a certain complexity. It is fantasy and fairy tale.
“The essential elements are there. The missing shoe, the idea of being lost and then found. I worked in the step mother and the ugly sisters although I went for a larger family to ensure there were enough roles for my dancers.
“There is the element of a kind of prince and of a fairy godmother although mine is a guardian angel. All the elements which give this story its character are there but in a different way.”
In this story Cinderella’s prince is a handsome RAF pilot and, although the two become separated at midnight, the heroine does not disappear in a pumpkin – but in an explosion from a German bomb.
Matthew was very keen that the Second World War be more than just a backdrop to the story, it also generates much of the tale.
“I really love the Prokofiev music to Cinderella because it has such an edge to it and, when I was doing my research into the music, I realised that he wrote it during the Second World War. That made me wonder if that was what gave it its darkness.”
The more Matthew delved into the idea of setting the piece during that conflict, the more it seemed to fit.
“That was a period when there was a real urgency and a need to escape,” he says. “Ideas of time being limited and the risk of losing someone were very much war time themes.
