"A Cinderella Story" Sizzles, Swings, and Scat-a-tat-tats

The spoiled stepsisters learn to dance at an Arthur Murray studio, Handsome Hunk Charming swaggers ala The Fonz and the heroine is saved by her pet poodle? Wowza!

Forget Prokofiev's ballet, forget Disney's cartoon, and forget Rodgers and Hammerstein's made-for-television musical. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet's A Cinderella Story, presented recently at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Fla., is about as traditional a rendition of the fairytale as West Side Story is of Romeo and Juliet. Although the RWB cast performs pirouettes aplenty and arabesques with abandon, and although the music -- oh, the music! -- is indeed by Richard Rodgers, this version, which debuted in 2004, stands firmly on its own slippered merits.

(Also forget a 2004 movie by the same name. No relation whatsoever.)

For starters, the set -- designed, as were the costumes, by Sandra Woodall -- is decidedly not misty-past European. Think instead Frank Lloyd Wright-ish upscale 1950s, lines and circles everywhere, a cabinet television topped with rabbit-ear anntenna, a sunburst wall clock, and a touch of neon.

Plopped in front of the TV, a girl named Nancy (Serena Sandford), "whose life is like a Cinderella story," according to the program notes, and her dog (Yosuke Mino) have just tuned in to the 1957 premiere performance of the R&H Cinderella. When Nancy's father (RWB senior ballet master Johnny W. Chang) brings home a new witch -- er, wife (Tara Birtwhistle) -- and her two daughters (Emily Grizzell and Chelsey Lindsay), it's easy to see where the story, codified in 1697 by French writer Charles Perrault, is headed.

How it gets there is another matter altogether -- a marvelously inventive matter of the combined talents of artistic director Andre' Lewis, choreographer Val Caniparoli, and arranger Ron Paley. The three pay homage to the 1957 production, playing snippets of the original sound track, including a bit by Julie Andrews, then turn the story on edge and en pointe to a score that sizzles, swings, and scat-a-tat-tats.

Arranger Ron Paley took Richard Rodgers' tunes such as "This Can't Be Love," "The Lady is a Tramp" and "Blue Moon" -- most written between 1926 and 1947 when he partnered with lyricist Lorenz Hart -- and turned them into big band jazz arrangements. Paley and his nine-piece band pair with Caniparoli's jazzlet? bajazz? which blends moves with the carriage and precision of ballet with the looser-jointed moves of jazz into a smooth-as-cayenne-blossom-honey sensation.

It more than works.

Tuesday's opening number featured the Butler's (Alexander Gamayunov) effortless entrechats with a soft-shoe feel to an a cappella scat tune sung by a gravelly-voiced Paley. Hero Bob (Gael Lambiotte) made the girls swoon as he swaggered into the Starlight Ballroom, then guided Nancy through a pas de deux as reminiscent of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as of Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. Ensemble numbers combined catch steps and jazz walks with coupés and jetés.

All of which means the dancers have to be versatile, strong and quick. It can't be easy to slink one's way on stage and then step in to an en pointe attitude or to time fouettés en tournant to a funky jazz riff. But the RWB dancers made it look oh-so-easy. Even more, they looked like they were having a blast.

Wowza!

[Photos courtesy of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. For a more personal take on this performance, go to Just The Write Touch. Also check out the short video interviews with Val Caniparoli, Ron Paley, and some of the performers on YouTube or at the RWB Web site.)