Feast Your Eyes, and Mind, on This Glass Slipper: Bolshoi's 'Cinderella'

It took place on the moon, and in a few other utterly bizarre locales of fevered imagination. Bicycles glided across the sky, glam-girl ponies trotted through. The Bolshoi Ballet's "Cinderella," performed in February at the Kennedy Center Opera House, was like no other version of the fairy tale for which Sergey Prokofiev composed his well-known score. But with its bracingly original and surreal details, and the connections made along the way with the complicated life of Prokofiev himself, it represented a breakthrough for the Moscow-based company and a revelation for Washington audiences.

In recent years, the two Russian powerhouse ballet companies -- the Bolshoi and its rival, the St. Petersburg-based Kirov -- have largely performed repertoire intended to impress the West. But in this "Cinderella," choreographed by former Bolshoi dancer Yuri Possokhov, a deep and searching Russian sensibility came through. This was not spectacle -- no jewels, no tiaras, no tanklike tutu formations -- and it was not a blitz through the previously forbidden body-bending ideas of the 20th century. It allowed the Bolshoi to confront its own legacy: The story of a well-meaning servant bound to sadists was linked to Prokofiev's experience as a state-supported artist compelled to blow Stalin's horn. In fact, at the close of this ballet, while the heroine found her bliss, Prokofiev, personified by the intriguing new role of the Storyteller, had no happy end -- demonstrated in a painfully moving image, capping a work that brimmed with invention.

-- Sarah Kaufman