Lyon Opera Ballet, Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, CA
“Cendrillon” and Ravel Program: “Un Ballo”, “Gaspard”, and “Bolero”
May 2, 2002

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle about retiring ballerina Joanna Berman was titled “Say it ain’t so, Jo”. The original quote is attributed to a young baseball fan and supposedly was uttered to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson after the Chicago Black Sox scandal. Although the story is apocryphal, it epitomizes the bewilderment of the innocence of the young, who struggle to understand dishonesty and brutality in the grown up world. With her usual quirky perceptiveness, Maguy Marin dives into the heart of that same exploration with her 1985 work for the Lyon Opera Ballet, “Cendrillon,” presented by Cal Performances last weekend in Berkeley.

Now, you might be thinking, “What a peculiar way of getting to that point,” but one of the things I find most appealing about Marin’s work is that it continues to inspire mental meanderings long after everyone’s packed up and gone home.

Many who found Marin’s recent “Points de Fuit” --presented by her own company here in April --befuddling and pretentious (although I would personally disagree) no doubt, heaved a sigh of relief at “Cendrillon,” which is just as long, but much more accessible. The story is, in a nutshell, a “Cinderella” set in a dollhouse world. Unsettling, creepy, weird and engaging, it’s the kind of production where you can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. Marin takes her role as artist-as-social-commentator seriously, and woven into “Cendrillon’s” narrative format and whimsical approach are sharp observations on human interaction.

Others have recounted the details of the action of “Cendrillon”, but let me note that despite its remarkably avant-garde appearance, this Cinderella story, set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev, is easily understood and charming in its own way, mixing humor with the storytelling to make some of the more disconcerting features palatable. The towering dollhouse set by Montserrat Casanova is both imposing and fantastical, filled with items that are drawn as much from dreams as real childhood memories. “Cendrillon” has a disturbing “Alice in Wonderland” feeling, with dancer/dolls, masked and costumed by Casanova, that are every bit grotesque and effective. The performers evince a stylized segmented movement quality, but Marin has also given each group of characters distinctive motifs as well. Ballet steps appear and reappear, but appropriated and deconstructed from the classical Petipa-style ballet idiom.

None of this, though, is to say that the dancers are performing a travesty of a ballet. They are highly trained, and nothing more clearly demonstrates this than the trio of ballerinas dancing a difficult divertissement with Cinderella (Susana Riazuelo). Riazuelo herself does a terrific impression of a ballet tyro, which is never easy when you’re as well trained as she obviously is. Cendrillon may have only just learned to use her new glass pointe shoes, but Riazuelo takes care to present a beautifully turned out heel in a balloné en avant. As Cinderella, she found a sweetly innocent interpretation that was both inquisitive and childlike. It reminded me of a young kitten embroiling itself in all sorts of situations, vaguely aware of having made gaffes, but wanting so much to be part of everything. Her avuncular robot/fairy godmother (who recalls “Robbie,” the nursemaid robot in Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”) has to employ a cadre of odd characters, who work hard not only to train the child but also keep her in line.

In the second act, the investigation of human relations deepens. How do children communicate with each other?, Marin asks. At the core of things, are adults any different? The scene at the ball is part debutantes, part Academy Awards, and part nursery school, and we see that these occasions are not so very different. The pas de deux between Cendrillon and her prince is tentative, like two children getting to know each other, but also like two lovers meeting for the first time. When the Cendrillon’s stepsisters plot to trip her up during a palace game of jump-rope, it smacks of both schoolyard intrigues and political jealousy.

If it weren’t bound by the narrative, the story would seem almost stream of consciousness. Marin has perfectly integrated an unlikely group of characters playing in a surreal landscape, which adroitly captures the way children readily accept the absurd. In a later scene, in which the prince embarks on his search for his lost love, a parade of characters cross the stage pulling wildly random toys behind them. It’s the kind of thing that makes sense to a child though: there’s the mommy, the daddy, and the duck.

Then too, with no facial expressions to assist in communications, the dancers are forced to rely solely on the expressiveness of their movements and body positions to convey meaning. Oddly enough, the loss of the humanity of the dancers allows Marin to tell the story in a broad, non-linear fashion and the unreality of the fairytale setting is perfect for her purposes. It’s a difficult task, and the dancers meet the challenge admirably: we are completely taken in by the characters that they represent. At the end of the ballet, the dancers bound out in character to take their bows, and then remove their masks. It’s one of the most unsettling moments of the evening, in which we are forced to relinquish the preconceptions and associations that we have developed for each character.

It’s taken a little while for American audiences to warm to Marin’s work, and perhaps even now, they still don’t “get” her. “Cendrillon,” however, will be an undoubted hit as the company tours the US. Even after seventeen years, the Lyon Opera performs the ballet with the freshness and relish that it deserves.

Admittedly, “Cendrillon” features largely limited movement and like many others, I was anxious to see the dancers set loose. Cal Performances wisely presented a second mixed repertoire program, including “Un Ballo” by Jiri Kylian, “Gaspard” by Tero Saarinen, and “Bolero” by Meryl Tankard, all set to the music of Maurice Ravel.

After Yuri Possokhov’s recent “Damned” it was difficult for me to dissociate the “Pavane for a Dead Princess” from the Medea story, but Kylian has created beautiful moments of unexpected movement in his idiomatic style that flow easily from the music. One would not expect anything less. Kylian understands the concept of lines through space, how to create unusual transitions, and the dancers of the Lyon Opera Ballet have absorbed his choreography fully, presenting a refined performance that was meditative while also dazzling.

The other two pieces certainly allowed the dancers to show more of their latitude in terms of technique than did “Cendrillon”, but ultimately, I found “Gaspard” to be strangely unsatisfying. One audience member remarked that she thought it to be a fascinating look into an insane asylum. Pierre Advokatoff surely looks like an unhappy dreamer but although the dancers worked to develop the movement, “Gaspard” never rose above balletic Minimalism.

“Bolero” as a piece of music, is an obvious choice for a rousing conclusion, and Tankard’s choreographic conceit of dancers’ shadows projected onto a scrim, similar to Balinese shadow puppetry, is initially interesting. There was a brief technical problem in which it appeared that something had blocked one of the projectors, but all in all, the work was performed well in the confines of a stage that had to be used strangely to achieve the three-dimensional effect on a two-dimensional surface. “Bolero” requires absolute precision, since any uncleanliness is writ large on the screen, and the dancers delivered no less. But while the idea has a certain hypnotic theatrical flourish to it, it still feels gimmicky. Nevertheless, at the close of the evening, we are all satisfied to confirm that the Lyon Opera Ballet is as accomplished a company as we suspected.

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This review initially appeared on Criticaldance.com on May 4, 2002.

For questions or comments, please contact maryellenhunt@yahoo.com.