“Cinderella” from Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre is presented in 7 nominations: for best ballet, best conductor (Teodor Currentzis), best actress (Inna Belash), best actor (Nikita Chetverikov), best artist (Aliona Pikalova ), etc. Written during the war, the music of “Cinderella” became a kind of counterpoint to horrors of the war time. And Teodor Currentzis heeded Prokofiev's desire - "I want to see the heroine not as a fairy-tale, half-real character, but a living face with human emotions.”
Alexey Miroshnichenko, the play’s choreographer, set the ballet in 1957, the year of the World Youth and Student Festival in Moscow, the very beginning of Khrushchev Thaw.
Perm’s “Cinderella” is built on counterpoints: luxurious crinolines of three ballet prima ballerinas playing the Stepmother and Daughters - and movements of marketwomen, a shrilly green classic suit of the Minister of Culture and her “severe scolding” of subordinates. But the main counterpoint is a cruel storyline and tender sad musical interpretation of the orchestra conducted by Teodor Currentzis.
