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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Washington Ballet’s Cinderella
By Alexandra Tomalonis -
Special to The Washington Post
June 2, 2003

Part ballet, part cartoon comedy, Septime Webre’s new “Cinderella” for Washington Ballet is going to seem different depending on who’s dancing. Friday night, a new Prince, Jared Nelson, made it clear that the ballet is about Cinderella’s finding her Prince rather than a comic take on the night those wild and crazy stepsisters tried to run off with the Jester.

Nelson doesn’t have princely line or proportions, but he has presence, and from the minute he entered the ballroom, with a huge leap, as forceful as though he had just come from battle, it was clear that this was his kingdom, and he was in charge. Cinderella (Brianne Bland, also in a debut) had come to the right place.

Bland was a lovely and intelligent Cinderella. Her style is out-of-fashion among today’s bone-thin high-kicking ballerinas, but her fluid, harmonious dancing suits a fairytale that celebrates goodness and order. She’s also a fine actress; when she mimes dancing at the ball in the first act, you know she’s dancing with an imaginary partner, not air.

One of the challenges for a dancer in a full-act ballet is to develop her role through dancing, to be different from act to act, and this Bland did as well, growing from a humble and insecure little grub in the first act, to a young girl giddy with attention and first love in the second, and letting that love flower in grand and suitably royal dancing in the final act’s crowning pas de deux. The Prince’s role isn’t as rich dramatically, but Nelson was the model of courtesy, always in character, and handled the tricky partnering smoothly.

Michele Jimenez was a suitably radiant Fairy Godmother Friday, and as authoritative as one can be without a wand (a fairy without a wand is like superman without a cape). Of special note among other debutants in solo roles were Elizabeth Wisenberg as a very young and light Spring Fairy; and Heather Perry, who tore through the Autumn Fairy’s variation like an October storm.