RNZB’s Cinder­ella is a car­ni­val of excess, packed full of joy and beauty and delight. It shines with queer­ness, and as a queer dan­cer myself, this bal­let was a revolu­tion­ary take on a well-hewn story and hit me right in the chest.

Cinder­ella (Mayu Tani­gaito) is the same woman we all know, stuck in a house with her evil step­moth­er and step­sisters, but this time, she doesn’t fall in love with Prince Charm­ing (Joshua Guille­mot-Rodger­son), but rather his Roy­al Mes­sen­ger (Laurynas Vėjalis). Charm­ing, how­ever, doesn’t seem all that inter­ested in women, and finds his love in Prince Dash­ing (Shae Ber­ney) a prince from anoth­er king­dom. The story, at least some­how in the way we know, blos­soms from there. 

Bal­let, like a lot of forms of dance with part­ners, tends to fall into strict gender roles. Recently, we’ve seen big dance com­pet­i­tions like Dan­cing With the Stars break the mould and allow same-sex part­ner­ships, and in Wel­ling­ton we’ve seen School for Gif­ted Children’s The Slutcrack­er and Sapphic Lake. 

How­ever, it is huge for a com­pany such as the RNZB to allow for such a new retell­ing of Cinder­ella – where queer­ness is cel­eb­rated and het­ero­norm­ativ­ity need not apply - and hon­estly, rather brave. It can be very simple to take the easy road, but no-one is immune to cri­ti­cism, no mat­ter how big the com­pany might be, and it’s a great step for a show like this to be per­formed in one of Wellington’s biggest ven­ues, to near sold-out audi­ences, who clap and cheer at the queer moments, rather than boo. 

Lough­lan Prior’s cho­reo­graphy for this work ranges from tra­di­tion­al bal­let (both partnered and not), through club dance, mod­ern dance and even voguing. Did I ever think I’d see the cater­pil­lar on an RNZB stage? No, but in Cinder­ella, there it is. The fresh­ness of the choreo simply adds anoth­er lay­er to the delight of the world. The fabled ball Cinder­ella attends is less ball­room, more hazy 3am club, and hon­estly – it works. 

In a more tra­di­tion­al­ist retell­ing, per­haps it wouldn’t, but I laugh and cheer along with the rest of the audi­ence as Prince Charming’s ball starts out as a parade of “eli­gible maid­ens” being shown to the Prince, all dressed in form­al wear and dan­cing with much poise; then des­cends rather swiftly into the bass-drop alco­hol-fueled dance chaos of a good night out. 

The cho­reo­graphy was bril­liant over­all, but here’s a few moments I espe­cially loved – obvi­ously actu­al­ised by a team of incred­ible and pro­fi­cient RNZB dan­cers. Prince Charm­ing dan­cing with his fen­cing team, com­plete with épées and actu­al sword­fight­ing (choreo’d by Simon Mann) was incred­ible to watch, and I don’t doubt a chal­lenge to block with swords in hand. All of the moments between Cinder­ella and the Roy­al Mes­sen­ger had a beau­ti­ful liquid sen­su­al­ity and genu­ine intim­acy to them; and the Evil Step­sisters Madelaine (Sara Gar­bow­ski) and Nicolette (Kirby Selchow) were genu­inely hil­ari­ous, often­times par­ody­ing cer­tain oth­er bal­lets we know well, but with a com­ic­al flair. 

My favour­ite moments, how­ever, were how Pri­or approached the dance scenes between the queer couple – Princes Charm­ing and Dash­ing. It can be so easy to queer a show by simply hav­ing a per­son of the same gender take on the oppos­ite gender role in a het­ero­sexu­al couple (ie: one per­son “plays the girl”, com­plete with a faux-fem­in­ine vibe that some­how exists to under­mine the queer­ness of the moment), and I’ve def­in­itely seen it done in queered dance before. 

How­ever, in Cinder­ella, Charm­ing and Dash­ing share the stage equally, and hold equal foot­ing. Their dances are undeni­ably mas­cu­line, but they share the lifts, the grapples and the holds – they’re bal­anced, rather than off-kil­ter, a little rough around the edges but unmis­tak­ably beau­ti­ful. These moments were very pre­cious, and held a lot of the hon­esty in the show for me.

It is that sense of bal­ance that under­scores the entirety of the show. Cinder­ella does­n’t need to be saved in this work, and has her own foot­ing. She does­n’t exist just to be wooed, and that’s so, so refresh­ing. She even gets a sword­fight­ing scene of her own. The strength and grace in Tani­gaito’s per­form­ance is lovely – she’s always a delight to see on stage.

I can’t talk about everything for fear of spoil­ers, but let me say, there were some won­der­ful new addi­tions to this piece that I didn’t expect, and will par­tic­u­larly res­on­ate with some of you who enjoyed a cer­tain queer Net­flix series a few years back. 

Claire Cow­an is back as the com­poser of this show. I abso­lutely adored her work in the RNZB’s past work Hansel and Gretel, and thor­oughly enjoyed her com­pos­i­tions in Cinder­ella. Ran­ging from more tra­di­tion­al clas­sic­al pieces, through EDM, techno and the occa­sion­al polka and tango, this is a soundtrack that’ll stick with you. (I’m writ­ing this review the morn­ing after I saw the show, and believe me, I was dream­ing some of the soundtrack last night). The col­li­sion of genres really adds to the over­all feel of the piece – this show wanders through time and space in a way that’s gor­geous, and the music is the guide that leads us on our way. Major props to the orches­tra as well, this is a spicy show with a lot of fun to it, and they abso­lutely brought the energy. 

Cinder­ella is beau­ti­ful chaos. From the grace and pro­fes­sion­al­ity of the dan­cers, to the shine of the set, the cos­tumes and the digit­al pro­jec­tion, time and effort has clearly been put into mak­ing this piece revolu­tion­ary. Art brings joy to des­per­ate times, and right now, when queer folk are in such strife in many places across the world and dis­cord is flar­ing up about our sheer right to exist, Cinder­ella is the balm that we all need. It is a cel­eb­ra­tion of love, euphor­ia, and end­less queer joy, and I cer­tainly felt that last night.

Besties, I am pos­it­ively shooketh. Take your friends, take your lov­ers. This is one you’ve gotta see.