CINDERELLA Comes to the National Theatre in Prague This Month
Performances will run through 19 March.
By: Stephi Wild Mar. 14, 2025
Cinderella is coming to The National Theatre in Prague. Performances will run through 19 March. The production is characterised by a refined neoclassical style and blending of dance with the visual component. Set to Sergei Prokofiev’s sublime, emotionally nuanced music, it features a simple scenery designed by Ernest Pignon-Ernest, a visual artist and precursor of urban art in France, and Jérôme Kaplan’s fantastic costumes.
The remake of the popular ballet Cinderella made by the world-famous French choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot to the music of Sergei Prokofiev reflects another dramaturgical line of the Czech National Ballet – an effort to return titles that have become very popular in the past and whose quality and significance will never lose its artistic value or topical message.
Cinderella is a well-known title, suitable for children, with an extraordinary musical score by Sergei Prokofiev, which alongside with Romeo and Juliet became a popular fixture of the Czech National Ballet's repertoire.
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his score during World War II. He applied leitmotifs reflecting the individual situations and underlining the lead characters’ specific traits and feelings. Prokofiev’s Cinderella received its world premiere in 1945, and, along with Romeo and Juliet and The Tale of the Stone Flower, is among his most frequently staged ballets.
Jean-Christophe Maillot is a prominent leading choreographic figure associated with the equally famous ballet ensemble in Monte Carlo where this production comes from. Maillot has a very distinctive style based on a refined, primarily artistic concept of ballets. The artist presents the virtuoso classical ballet technique in new variants of movement and spatial structures originating as if from "another world". His Cinderella also bears this signature technique. It is a production with an unusual beauty of modern aesthetics and exceptional energy, which permeates all its musical, artistic, directorial and choreographic components.
What is Maillot’s production like? A vital role is played by memories.
“When I created Cendrillon, I was grieving the death of my father. The notion of mourning is found in several of my ballets and it takes on an important dimension in this piece. How can we continue to live without the memory of the deceased crushing us? My response to this is that we need to be more attentive to others, even though grief tends to isolate us from the rest of the world. The friends, family, the human beings that chance puts in our path. Among them are the good fairies who will be able to uplift us,” says JeanChristophe Maillot.
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