Alice and Cinderella: All Wheeldon Last Week

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San Francisco Ballet pulls out all the stops in its new ‘Cinderella’ by Christopher Wheeldon (Photo: Erik Tomasson)

Last week was Chris Wheeldon Week in San Francisco, with Ballet in Cinema’s broadcast of the Royal Ballet in Alice in Wonderland in Bay Area theatres, and the premiere of Cinderella at San Francisco Ballet. It was Standing Room Only every night at the War Memorial Opera House. We only got to see one cast in Cinderella, but a very fine cast it was – led by Vanessa Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan. Sarah Lamb and Federico Bonelli were charming in Alice, Zenaida Yanowsky was outrageous as the Queen of Hearts, and Steven McRae and Edward Watson will probably never again find themselves inhabiting roles as bizarre as the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit.

Is Wheeldon single-handedly reviving the dying art of the full-length story ballet? Read our review of Cinderella in the Huffington Post, and our bite-size review of Alice in Wonderland on Storify.

 

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2 thoughts on “Alice and Cinderella: All Wheeldon Last Week

    • I know what you mean about the Nutcracker but to be fair, modern choreographers have done such wildly creative things with the Nutcracker it is often a completely different ballet. If someone had shut down the Nutcracker 25 years ago, the world would have missed the genius of Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut. Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty are other war horses that have inspired modern masterpieces by Matthew Bourne and others.

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