Sadler’s Wells has expanded its educational activity to run a week-long, main house project for schools and colleges from December 12 based on London City Ballet’s three-act Christmas production of Cinderella.
Financial difficulties in the early 1990s forced London City Ballet, one of the most popular touring classical ballet companies, to lose its education officer and discontinue its long-standing Sadler’s Wells Christmas season. Now the theatre’s community and education unit returns the company to centre stage with a dazzling production choreographed by Matthew Hart, billed as Britain’s brightest choreographic hope for the future.
Hart, still only 24, has already choreographed Fanfare and Caught Dance for the Royal Ballet, Street for Birmingham Royal Ballet and Sir Peter and the Wolf for the Royal Ballet School. At 16, he won the CosmopolitanCA dance award and recently accompanied the Royal Ballet to Africa, where he choreographed Tusk in aid of Elephant Conservation.
He said: “Such attention could be a great pressure on me but I don’t feel things like that from the outside. My pressures are my own. I set my own standards and care about reaching them.”
Hart, having danced in Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella for the Royal Ballet, has reworked the story by incorporating the pantomime character of Buttons and portraying the Ugly Sisters in a new light. He said: “I’m aiming to lift ballet back up to what it used to be. I’m trying to recreate a traditional, classic, fairy tale in dance.”
Cinderella was first performed in 1945 at the Kirov Ballet, with subsequent reworkings by Scottish Ballet and Northern Ballet Theatre to Rossini and Johann Strauss II. Hart’s update uses Prokofiev’s original score perfomed live by the LCB orchestra.
Although lecture-demonstrations aimed at key stages 1 and 2 are sold out, seats can be had for the four highly-subsidised schools matinees. These are targeted at sevens to 18s and ideal for key stages 2 and 3. There is a teachers’ in-service training session with an excellent education resource pack.
Cinderella, schools matinees: 1.30pm -4pm, December 12 to 15, Pounds 5 plus free teacher’s place for every 10 seats booked. Public performances: December 16 to January 6, 7.30, matinees Jan 16, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, and Jan 6 2.30pm: Sadler’s Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4TN. Tel: 0171-713 6000.
