Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Ballet West debuts "Cinderella" with sets and costumes from London's Royal Ballet.
- The production required significant costume alterations and set adjustments for American stages.
- The show features Prokofiev's moving score and promises a magical experience for audiences.
SALT LAKE CITY — The magical fairytale of "Cinderella" returns to Salt Lake City, but this time dancers will grace the stage with costumes and sets from the Royal Ballet in London.
"Even though it's the same ballet that people have loved in the past, it's got a whole new look," Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute said.
Ballet West performed Sir Frederick Ashton's version of "Cinderella" in 2013 and 2018, with more than 20-year-old sets and costumes the company borrowed from the Joffrey Ballet, which had purchased them from the Dutch National Ballet. Although still beautiful, the production elements were getting old and worn.
"That took a lot of wear and tear on a production that, at this point, was 30 years old. So we knew that we were going to need a new production," Sklute said.
In 2017, Sklute was visiting with his friend, the director of London's Royal Ballet, and learned that the company planned to build a new production and wanted to sell its current costumes and sets that were only 10 years old but were "beautiful pieces of art."
Ballet West and Boston Ballet have rented productions from each other before, as the two companies have similar stages. So Sklute approached Boston Ballet, and the two groups — along with some help from Cincinnati Ballet — decided to purchase the "Cinderella" production together as "it just made sense."
"It was really just a long-term process of planning, knowing that we needed a new production and one that we really wanted to bring to the audiences here and in Boston," Sklute said.
But getting a production from London ready for an American stage was quite the task. The Royal Ballet's stage is one of the biggest in the world, so the Boston Ballet team assumed the job of retrofitting the sets to make them work for a smaller stage.
Ballet West tackled the more than 250 lavish costumes.
"The Royal Ballet dancers are much smaller in stature — our company is quite tall, males and females. About 85% to 90% of the costumes didn't fit," said Jason Hadley, Ballet West director of costume production.
Normally, all of Ballet West's costumes are made from scratch to fit the dancers. But for this production, Hadley's team had to make things longer, dye additional fabric, take apart pieces, reconstruct garments and fabricate new tutu bottoms.
"We stuck to the designs as closely as we possibly could ... making sure they look like how they looked on the Royal Ballet," Hadley said.
Additionally, the Royal Ballet is known for using wigs in its shows, so the company kept all of the wigs from the "Cinderella" production for repurposing in other shows. This left Ballet West's wig master, Yancey Quick, the responsibility to craft dozens of wigs and headpieces in a matter of weeks.
"The goal is always to make them look as natural as possible — dyed and curled to perfection, with specific shades chosen to match the characters' personalities," Quick said.
For "one of the largest and most complex shows" Ballet West has done, Quick said it takes his team two hours before each performance to prep the cast. They then touch up the wigs throughout the performance, take them on and off the dancers, and clean and restore them at the end of the night to prepare for the next show.
Boston Ballet was first to premiere the new sets, wigs and costumes when it performed "Cinderella" in February 2024. Since the start of the year, Ballet West has been hard at work resetting wigs, tailoring costumes and putting up sets to be ready for opening night on Friday.
"I'm really excited for it to come together, and I'm really excited for audiences to see it," Sklute said.
Romantic, dreamy, magical
When Cinderella enters the ball, she arrives at the top of a grand staircase in a gorgeous tutu, with a cape flowing behind her. As she gracefully descends the stairs en pointe, delicate music plays, and everyone at the ball looks to her.
"It is just a breathtaking moment," Sklute said.
The score, by Sergei Prokofiev, is "so moving. It's at times opulent; it's at times intimate," Sklute said. Prokofiev wrote the music in the 1930s while his wife was in a Soviet internment camp and he envisioned her as Cinderella, he added.
"There's a sense of sadness in the score, as well. It goes from being hilariously funny to very sad and touching. It really is, to me, one of my favorite story ballets of all time," Sklute said.
From the choreography to the storytelling to the comedy to the romance, this production has something for everyone, he said.
"If you know and love ballet, it will have everything you want. If you've never seen one, it's also a perfect one to start with because there's so much going on, and the new sets and costumes are just very, very magical," Sklute said.
Hadley is excited to see it all come together, from the "hilarious" moments with the stepsisters to the "dreamy" romance scenes between the prince and Cinderella.
"The story itself is magical, but I think this production is really magical and it's very painterly," Hadley said. "It's something our Utah audience should definitely come and see. It is a production from beginning to end."
Ballet West's "Cinderella" opens Friday and runs through Feb. 16 at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City.
