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At a recent rehearsal of the Scottish Ballet, Marge Hendrick did something unusual for a ballerina. Running through a scene from \u201cCinders!,\u201d a gender-bending new version of \u201cCinderella,\u201d she grazed her partner Evan Loudon\u2019s chin reassuringly as he looked down, unsure of himself. Then, Hendrick extended a hand to Loudon and paraded him around her, welcoming him to her world.<\/p>\n
It was an exact reversal of the gender dynamic that has long dominated ballet\u2019s repertoire. Typically men are cast as confident, chivalrous princes, there to provide support to their female partners. \u201cYou lead the woman, you present the woman,\u201d Loudon said in an interview after the rehearsal. \u201cIt\u2019s the job in traditional ballets.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this production, with choreography by Christopher Hampson, the artistic director of the Scottish Ballet, Loudon plays Cinders, a male version of Cinderella. And Hendrick is Princess Louise, the royal character who comes to his rescue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For Loudon, letting her take the lead has meant fighting his ballet instincts daily. \u201cI don\u2019t really know how to hold myself anymore, where to put my hand with her,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Hampson\u2019s \u201cCinders!,\u201d which has its premiere in Glasgow on Dec. 9 ahead of a British tour, is pushing at ballet\u2019s calcified gender roles. While gender flips are hardly new in film and theater, ballet has been slower to experiment with them. In recent years, some choreographers, like Justin Peck<\/a>, have created gender-neutral roles, mostly in shorter, abstract works. In 2022, Benjamin Millepied<\/a> mixed and matched genders in a new version of \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d for his contemporary company L.A. Dance Project, casting the star-crossed lovers as two women, two men or a straight pair, depending on the night.<\/p>\n Yet gender-swapping the roles of an existing fairy-tale ballet, with its set narrative structure and traditional pas de deux, is a different ballgame. When Hampson first explained the concept to Daria Klimentova, a former star of English National Ballet who coaches the lead roles in \u201cCinders!,\u201d she thought he was joking, she said in an interview in Glasgow. Bruno Micchiardi, the first-cast Cinders, recalled the dancers\u2019 reaction: \u201cWe were all kind of like: \u2018OK. How does that work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s because unlike theater, when it comes to gender fluidity, ballet has to contend with its binary technique. Whether a man or a woman says \u201cI love you,\u201d \u201cit\u2019s the same three words,\u201d Hampson said. \u201cBut we\u2019re working with codified movement.\u201d Ballet dancers specialize early on: Girls learn to dance on pointe, and boys develop the skills needed to lift their partners. A new generation of nonbinary performers has started to question this strict divide<\/a> in recent years, but it remains deeply ingrained in the art form.<\/p>\n \u201cCinders!\u201d is not the first time Hampson has challenged the status quo in ballet. At Scottish Ballet, where he has been artistic director since 2012, he has spoken up about the abusive environment ballet has often fostered<\/a>, as well as the outdated stereotypes in its repertoire. Last year, he was among the first ballet leaders to hire intimacy directors<\/a> in order to look after the physical and emotional well-being of performers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The idea of a gender-flipped \u201cCinders!\u201d first came to him in a queer bookshop in Edinburgh. He happened upon \u201cGender Swapped Fairy Tales\u201d (2020) by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett, in which the gender of every character in classic tales is changed, including \u201cCinderella.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019ve not been rewritten,\u201d Hampson said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the initial text with a stepfather instead of a stepmother, a fairy godfather and so on. What fascinated me was that the stories just worked. I wish that I\u2019d had that in front of me when I was growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n Hampson had already choreographed several versions of \u201cCinderella,\u201d but said he thought the ballet needed \u201cfreshening,\u201d especially the plot. In this version, Cinders\u2019 parents both die when their shop goes up in flames. There is no stepmother: Instead, Cinders is left with the authoritarian new owner of the shop, Mrs. Thorne, and her children.<\/p>\n The gender change helped to highlight the original\u2019s stereotypes. \u201cYou start to realize that most male characters in fairy tales are on a quest and an adventure,\u201d Hampson said, \u201cwhereas many female characters require an answer from the world. They need to be helped and completed by a male protagonist.\u201d<\/p>\n Bethany Kingsley-Garner, a veteran Scottish Ballet principal who created the role of Cinderella in Hampson\u2019s previous production for the company, was ecstatic at the change. \u201cI couldn\u2019t wait to hold the ball on my own,\u201d she said. In this version, Princess Louise now gets the kind of ballet entrance usually reserved for men: a flamboyant Prokofiev fanfare heralding her arrival, followed by high-flying jumps.<\/p>\n Kingsley-Garner, who will retire after \u201cCinders!,\u201d added: \u201cIt was about time that I got a chance to lead in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Similarly, the role of Cinders allows for a level of vulnerability that male ballet dancers rarely learn to portray onstage. \u201cI get to show loads of different emotions \u2014 I get to be timid!\u201d Micchiardi, the first-cast Cinders, said. \u201cThe dream would be that in 20 years, when boys are doing a solo in school, they\u2019ll want to do male Cinders.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yet for audiences, the changes will be much milder than a \u201cgender reversal\u201d might lead many to expect. Hampson \u2014 who said he had changed about 70 percent of the choreography from his previous production \u2014 primarily wanted to shift the story, rather than to challenge the technical divide between men and women. His male Cinders isn\u2019t on pointe and the Princess isn\u2019t asked to lift her partner.<\/p>\n \u201cIs a woman doing a tour en l\u2019air going to add to the story?,\u201d he asked, referring to a step typically reserved for men.<\/p>\n Over the run of \u201cCinders!,\u201d male Cinders\/Princess and female Cinders\/Prince pairings are set to alternate, with some dancers playing two roles: Jessica Fyfe, the first-cast Princess, will also perform the title role in later performances. And when she switches to Cinders, she won\u2019t be performing all-new choreography. The pas de deux and some variations remain the same regardless of the gender combination. \u201cIt\u2019s been quite mind-bending sometimes,\u201d Fyfe said with a smile.<\/p>\n As the Princess, Fyfe is swept by her male partner into the same lifts and turns as female Cinders \u2014 yet she has to bring different intentions to them, to give the sense that she is leading. In a rehearsal, Hampson spent time finessing a section in which Fyfe drapes an arm over her Cinders\u2019 shoulder, while he spins her around in an arabesque.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe had this idea that the promenade came from her, pushing from the arm over the shoulder,\u201d Hampson told the dancers. \u201cIt\u2019s gone back to being reactive.\u201d Fyfe and Micchiardi repeated the sequence several times, trying to hide the fact that Micchiardi does a lot of the physical leading.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to get to the point where the Princess instigates movements, where she drives the floor pattern,\u201d Hampson said later in his office. \u201cIt\u2019s really challenging me as a choreographer. I hadn\u2019t fully realized that there are some tropes that I go to that I\u2019ve not questioned enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Micchiardi, who worked closely with Hampson and Fyfe to create the new-look lead roles, said they were all still figuring it out. \u201cMaybe in 20 years\u2019 time, pas de deux will be different, with the woman being more active,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As for the glass slipper, the female Cinders leave a pointe shoe behind as they flee the ball, and the male Cinders will leave a soft ballet shoe adorned with jewels. The change had a domino effect on casting: In most versions, the Prince comes to Cinderella\u2019s home only so the stepsisters can try the \u201cslipper\u201d on. To solve that narrative roadblock, Hampson added a stepbrother, Tarquin, who tries on Cinders\u2019 jeweled shoe.<\/p>\n Tarquin may not win the Princess\u2019s hand, but he has his own happy ending: a same-sex romance with a duke from her court. Harvey Littlefield, 23, who identifies as gender queer, said being cast as the duke was the first time they have been able to play a gay character in ballet; there are next to none in the repertoire. \u201cIt feels like I can put myself fully into it,\u201d they said. \u201cIt was quite a hopeful moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like Littlefield, Fyfe and Micchiardi said they were inspired by the creation process. \u201cA lot of ballet companies are going down a more contemporary route to create new works, but this is very classical,\u201d Fyfe said of \u201cCinders!\u201d \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s one of the hardest things to do at the moment \u2014 to keep that classicism, but bring it into this century.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes you fall in love with the art form all over again,\u201d Micchiardi said.<\/p>\n And Hampson is now certain that other classics can be given a similar treatment. \u201cIt\u2019s doable for every ballet,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t see why it wouldn\u2019t be, because we\u2019re telling the human condition story. I just know as a little boy, I would have loved to have seen this show.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n