Thursday, May 14, 2026
For a midsize company like the Washington Ballet, with around two dozen dancers (plus 10 or so in the “studio company”), having a talented and prolific choreographer as artistic director is a sound business model. When that person is capable of staging classic story ballets as well as creating striking contemporary works, even better.
Last weekend’s performances at the National Theatre of “Cinderella,” choreographed by Washington Ballet Artistic Director Edwaard Liang, were a case in point (or pointe). Liang, who has now completed two full seasons with the company, is clearly a slipper that fits.
Beginning in October with “Moving Forces,” a program of contemporary works by Liang, Justin Peck, Dwight Rhoden and Christopher Wheeldon in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, the 2025-26 season also included former TWB Artistic Director Septime Webre’s Georgetown-set “Nutcracker” at the Warner Theatre and Liang’s take on the eerie classic “Giselle” in late February and early March in Sidney Harman Hall.
This “Cinderella” premiered in 2015 at BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio, where Liang was artistic director for 11 seasons. Revived in Columbus in 2022, it was presented last year by Los Angeles Ballet.
I saw the Friday, May 8, performance, one of four, with Maki Onuki as Cinderella, Lope Lim as the Prince, Eun Won Lee as the Beggar Woman/Fairy Godmother, Andrea Allmon as Cinderella’s Stepmother, Samara Rittinger as Stepsister Florinda (the tall, older one), Tamako Miyazaki as Stepsister Lucinda (the short, younger one), Gilles Delellio as the Jester and Andile Ndlovu as the Master of Ceremonies.
Expert dancers, these eight leads delightfully portrayed their fairy-tale characters, supported by other company and studio company dancers. Colorful waves of additional costumed performers regularly swept in: roughly 150 Washington School of Ballet students participated (not all at the same performance).
A partial list: Bumblebees, Butterflies, Carriage Footmen, Castle Messenger, Castle Pages, Clergyman, Court Ladies and Court Men, Fairies (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, each with a Cavalier), Maids, Snow Angels, Sprites (including Lead Sprites) and Townsmen and Townswomen.
Lasting about two and a half hours, including two 20-minute intermissions, the three-act ballet, set to thrilling, comic and poignant (recorded) music composed in the early 1940s by Sergei Prokofiev, is a work of “Nutcracker”-like variety and charm.
Seeking to follow in Tchaikovsky’s footsteps, Prokofiev dedicated it to the composer of “Swan Lake,” “The Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker,” who had died half a century earlier. Based on the narrative of 17th-century French author Charles Perrault, the scenario, by Nikolai Volkov, comprises 50 episodes (“Cinderella Dreams of the Ball,” “Dance of the Courtiers,” “Grand Waltz,” etc.).
“Cinderella” premiered at the Bolshoi in Moscow in November of 1945 — not at the Kirov in Leningrad as originally intended — with choreography by Rostislav Zakharov. Since then, the music has been set by choreographers such as Frederick Ashton (whose 1948 production put the stepsisters in drag), Ben Stevenson in 1970; Rudolf Nureyev in 1986, Wheeldon in 2012 and Webre in 2003, a version revived by the Washington Ballet in 2008 and 2013.
From the Webre production, this “Cinderella” makes use of gorgeous costumes by Judanna Lynn and set elements — some poetically abstract and others combining picture-book exaggeration with Mozartean elegance — designed by James Kronzer, also the designer of Liang’s “ALICE (in wonderland),” seen in April of 2025 at Capital One Hall in Tysons.
In a 2019 BalletMet website post, Erin Rollins, costume shop manager, described some of the modifications to the former. Regarding the stepsisters: “We wanted them to be comical but not slapstick comical,” she said. “They’re just hanging out in their corsets and bloomers all day long.”
The Jester’s costume had to be “overhauled” for that revival. “His jacket is a 16-to-20-piece bodice,” Rollins explained. “It’s got all this piping running up and down it and four or five different fabrics that are being mixed and interwoven.”
And to create a glass slipper that could be danced in, “we ended up creating a decorative decal out of gold Venetian lace and gems and mounting it on a piece of netting … [so] the dancers could take that shape and tack it to the box of their pointe shoe.”
Prokofiev wrote: “I see Cinderella not only as a fairy-tale character but also as a real person, feeling, experiencing and moving among us.” As choreographed by Liang and portrayed by Onuki, the audience takes her seriously; we become caught up in her rapid emotional shifts from hope to despair to elation, closely keyed to the music. The production offered a winning balance of storytelling, humor, romance and virtuosity (in 2019, New York Times dance critic Gina Kourlas referred to “Mr. Liang’s acrobatic partnering”).
Here are three very loose, condensed recaps, one per act.
In Act I, after a vision of Cinderella’s father’s death in the forest, we are in a cottage with hearth and chandelier. The Stepmother rips off Cinderella’s necklace and put it on herself. Clutching a tall stick, the Beggar Woman arrives in a black cloak; only Cinderella is kind to her. To pay her back for her scorn, she turns Stepsister Florinda into a chicken, who goes off flapping her arms. Two footmen deliver gowns for the Stepmother and Stepsisters. Left alone, Cinderella dances a solo, imagining herself at the ball, but bereft that she cannot be. As she scrubs, the Beggar Woman returns and, as the Fairy Godmother, dances a solo and waves her wand. Fairies, sprites and insects appear and dance in small and large groups. A giant illuminated clock face lowers. Cinderella reappears as a princess. Other groups dance, the stage fills and Cinderella passes behind in her carriage.
In Act II, we are at the ball. The Stepmother and Stepsisters arrive with purple feathers in their hair. The Jester dances with six men. The Master of Ceremonies solos and dances with the Prince, who dances a solo. The Stepmother and Stepsisters try to get the Prince’s attention. Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother enter and dance in mist. The Fairy Godmother touches the Prince with her wand. All are frozen as he turns to Cinderella. They raise their right hands toward each other and dance; he lifts her in a pas de deux. Cinderella solos. The Prince solos with jumps and spins. The Prince and the Master of Ceremonies dance. Another pas de deux of the Prince and Cinderella follows, then a comic interlude with the Stepmother and Stepsisters. Eighteen clock faces drop. Cinderella holds her face against the Prince’s hand, then in her own hands. The hour strikes, the Jester brings in the slipper left behind, the Stepsisters hold out their feet.
As Act III opens in the forest, Cinderella stands, in her rags, back-to-back with the Prince, who holds the lost slipper. She exits left; the Master of Ceremonies takes the Prince off right. Seven townspeople sit on stools. The Jester dances with the Master of Ceremonies. Three women force their foot into the slipper, held by the Footman, everyone’s head going up and down with their legs. Back in the cottage, Cinderella scrubs, weeps, dances with her broom, raises her face to a flower in the remaining slipper. The Stepmother and Stepsisters return. Stepsister Lucinda has a comic solo of frustration, then, hearing the Jester and Footman, the three dance. The Stepsisters try hard to make their feet fit. The second slipper is noticed. The Prince and Cinderella dance, then exit. Stepsister Florinda fall on the floor in agony. The Fairy Godmother turns all three into chickens. The Fairies and Sprites dance in the forest. The Fairy Godmother solos and dances with attendants, then all. Back in her gown, Cinderella and the Prince dance a closing pas de deux. The Clergyman marries them and — tableau — confetti falls.
Originally the production was to have a longer run in the Eisenhower Theater, but — like the Martha Graham Dance Company, San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet — the Washington Ballet pulled out of the Kennedy Center earlier this spring. None of the other companies relocated its Washington, D.C., performances.
Programs, dates and venues for 2026-27, the Washington Ballet’s 50th anniversary season, have yet to be announced.