Bossov Ballet Theatre - Vaganova Ballet Technique

WHY SEE BOSSOV’S CINDERELLA?

by Michael Duncan Wyly
Executive Director, Bossov Ballet Theatre

The girls are beautiful, the men are strong, the dancing is spellbinding, the costumes are bright, and the music is powerful. This is not Walt Disney’s Cinderella for children. Yet children will love it. And so will their parents. So will a couple on a romantic date or a just for fun date. It is Cinderella as author Charles Perrault, 1628 – 1703, meant it to be, a story with depth, a morality tale through which children might learn, and entertaining enough for them to listen. That’s what the old Fairy Tales were. Lessons of life.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote the music. He was a student of life, as well as a great composer. His Cinderella Overture opens with ominous, eerie, strains of foreboding. Something’s going to happen, it tells us – something big.

Andrei Bossov’s original libretto and choreography give this ballet its authority, uniqueness, and profound impact.

Cinderella is a tale of people being tested. The curtain opens to a household, innocent and normal at first glance; but, as we look on it, we learn that all is not well. Jealousy, greed, cruelty lie close under the skin. A wretched beggar invades the living space and goes to each personality seeking kindness: the stepsisters, the stepmother, the gentle girl with the broom, and each reacts in her own way, each revealing something of her self, tested unwittingly for selflessness, compassion – a test that only Cinderella passes.

From where and how Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother appears comes as a surprise. We won’t reveal it in this treatise. She appears – as the reward for passing the test – but the precarious journey is not over, even for Cinderella.

The ball, the beautiful clothes, the Prince, himself a figure of complexity – searching for something, some fulfillment for his life. The ticking clock, the approach of midnight – Cinderella dares not submit to him without making him prove his mettle; she has to go, make him pursue. Elsewise she cannot know – is it love he has for her? Or something less noble?

The famous shoe, found by the prince. And now the test of compatibility – at last – the perfect fit, assured. This is how to make a marriage. Testing, restraining, assuring.

That Prokofiev composed the piece while World War 2 raged – in the very country where it was raging most – is part of what makes the ballet the drama that it is. That Prokofiev had fled his native land after the Bolshevik takeover, worked in France, then the United States, returning to Russia only when lured by a contract to create the music for a ballet Romeo and Juliet, soon to be made famous by the superb Russian dancers of Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet, tells us something of the man and who he is. His life story is of one always on the move. It is 1940 when he conceives the idea for Cinderella. It is 1941 when the German Army invades his homeland by surprise. He creates the score after fleeing a battle-threatened Moscow, and while moving from town to town, keeping a step ahead of the invaders. The saga pervades the music. It is impossible to hear it and not think of the war, the turmoil, the suspense of a near-run thing, and finally, victory, and peace. Yet like the laughter that sustains the soldier in the hardest of times, Bossov’s irrepressible sense of humor emerges in the ballet by surprise, sinks back in the shadows, then comes again, like the ever-present spirit of nature that keeps us going.

Who are the dancers? Maine’s own Bossov Ballet Theatre has matured in the course of its twelve-year history. Its dancers are not children. “Once a Bossov Dancer always a Bossov Dancer” is one of the troupe’s mottos. Its graduates return in the summer. Anna Marie Cowan, a Southern Belle from Mississippi, who trained under Bossov all four years of her high school career as a boarding student at Maine Central Institute and now dances professionally with the Classical ballet of Charleston, South Carolina, will dance one of the two nights as Cinderella, splitting the role with a new joinee from the State of Texas, Cheyenne Richardson. The prince is Calder Taylor of Enfield, New Hampshire, a twenty-one year graduate of Maine Central Institute’s Class of 2005, now a professional dancer with Ballet Theatre of Maryland. These are only two of the several now-adult dancers who trained as fledglings under Bossov and will be on stage in Waterville in Cinderella. Step sisters, step mother, Godmother, comprise bossov’s “old hands”. Acting skills, dancing skills, and finesse on stage are professional level.

If you’ve never appreciated ballet before, you will, after you see Bossov’s Cinderella. We guarantee it.

For tickets call the Box Office, Waterville Opera House, 207-873-7000.
All seats reserved.