A Glittering Cinderella

There’s a steady unity of vision in Tetsuya Kumakawa’s production of “Cinderella,” first staged by K-Ballet Tokyo in 2012, that finds a delicate balance between the silliness and enchantment that characterizes the fairytale, first popularized for Western audiences in Frederick Ashton’s 1948 version after Rostislav Zakharov’s original for the Bolshoi Ballet on November 21, 1945.

Performance

K-Ballet Tokyo: “Cinderella” by Tetsuya Kumakawa

Place

Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan, January 9, 2025

Words

Kris Kosaka

Yuka Iwai in K-Ballet Tokyo's “Cinderella” by Tetsuya Kumakawa. Photograph courtesy of K-Ballet Tokyo

This unity starts with Leslie Travers and his stunning set design. As the lights dim and Prokofiev’s melancholic introduction rises from the orchestra, a skewed Victorian clock with slanted, out of sync numerals graces the drop curtain, our first hint of the dissonance that pervades this production.

The curtain rises to find a grim, flickering light on Cinderella (Yuka Iwai) as she toils, a distorted fireplace smouldering in one corner, the shadowy lighting courtesy of Hisashi Adachi. The entrance of the Stepsisters (Risako Toda and Kazuha Seri) quickly change the tone with their light, rapid movements and playful pettiness more evocative of immature squabbling than mean-girl mischief.

When the Stepmother makes her entrance, (Luke Heydon in cross-gendered excellence) the tone shifts once again. Heydon’s Stepmother commands attention with haughty grandeur, a more complex character than I’ve seen in other productions. Yes, the campy ridiculousness is there—especially when bosky in the Act 2 ballroom scene or scheming with a fake slipper in Act 3—but the thread of darkness underlying Prokofiev’s score manifests itself repeatedly with Heydon’s multi-faceted performance.

Harsh notes of jagged malice are juxtaposed with hammy absurdity, and I found myself unable to look away whenever he took the stage, wondering what the Stepmother would do next—make us wince with laughter or recoil at her cruelty? Breaking from caricature—favoring neither cardboard villainy nor undiluted camp—Heydon somehow humanizes the Stepmother, although there’s plenty to despise or ridicule throughout his performance.

Luke Heydon, Risako Toda, and Kazuha Seri in “Cinderella” by Tetsuya Kumakawa. Photograph courtesy of K-Ballet Tokyo

Kumakawa’s paradoxical unity of discord thus bridges the extremes of comedy and romance in this most enchanting of our happily-ever-after ballets. Surreal touches of incongruence continue throughout the staging—stag-headed footman, a giant orange, acrobatic antics from the Tall Knight and Short Knight—as the storytelling effortlessly swerves from exaggerated buffoonery to dreamlike romance. Some of the humor lands more successfully than others, but the tension is maintained throughout.

The Prince (Masaya Yamamoto) doesn’t have much to do in this version except dance beautifully and look princely. Like several modern versions, the Prince’s foreign travels in his search for Cinderella in Act 3 is omitted from Prokofiev’s score. Kumakawa instead adds further mischief from the Stepmother to deepen the emotional impact of the slipper scene.

Yamamoto does both beauty and princely-ness with grace and presence, and even manages to characterize the Prince as a misfit himself, in parallel to Cinderella, with only one short sequence. At the ball, Yamamoto briefly partners a revolving parde of twirling, identical beauties, perfectly revealing through dance the Prince’s ennui and disdain for his palace prison, a perfect set-up for his meet with destiny.

Moving out of the shadows after the frenzied ball preparations in Act 1 (an early comic highlight), Iwai reenacts the scene in her own imagination. This solo, with her whimsical pantomimes of the ball prep and graceful, dreamy extensions to a now empty stage, transforms the earlier campy choreography to a study in classical refinement. Iwai’s delicate, quick footwork mesmerizes, especially when she reconfigures the Ballet Master’s steps with precise elegance. We can rewrite our stories, most importantly in our imaginations, Iwai seems to say with this solo.

Yuka Iwai and Masaya Yamamoto in K-Ballet Tokyo's “Cinderella.” Photograph courtesy of K-Ballet Tokyo

Another highlight of classical elegance is the Fairy Godmother (Sena Hidaka) and the popular entrances of the four fairies, tasked to support Cinderella. Kumakawa doesn’t discriminate with his choreography, here or later in the ball scenes, where multiple performances reveal the depth of his dancers’ talents. Each of the four fairies is given a distinctive, challenging sequence reflecting the personality of the seasons, assiduously aligned to the music.

My favorite was the Teacup Fairy/Winter (Aya Shimamura) nailing her flurry of pirouettes with the discordant beats. Other choreographic highlights include the sudden chaos of midnight to end Act 2, the mystical waltz subverting into a throbbing, hellish landscape where the lovers are separated by waves of wild movement, accurately conveying the lurching uncertainty when one is ripped from a dream.

The stagecraft also adds a layer of subtle shifts that begs repeated viewing. The changing artistry of the trees as each fairy is introduced, the huddled shadow of the Beggar Woman transforming to the Fairy Godmother, the alignment of the slanted fireplace to represent the harmony of Cinderella’s new life with her Prince, and the ever-changing landscape of stars, including the ultimate fairy-tale ending for believers.

“Cinderella” marked an acknowledged turn for Kumakawa. It was the first production where he deliberately stepped back as a dancer and focused solely on creation. After its successful debut, the ballet has emerged as an audience favorite. No matter where his version ends up in time and place, Kumakawa’s “Cinderella” charted the course for K-Ballet Tokyo’s rise to success without him as a dancer.

Kris Kosaka

Kris Kosaka is a writer and educator based in Kamakura, Japan. A lifelong ballet fan and studio rat in her youth, she's been contributing to the Japan Times since 2009. She writes across culture, but especially in dance, opera and literature.

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