Finding Cinderella

By BERNADETTE RAE

Larissa Wright's raven hair contrasts dramatically with her pale skin. Her wide and expressive mouth breaks into a ready smile, which instantly lights up her face. Ballet dancers are all tiny, but she manages to wear even that illusory fragility in spunky style.

Wright is dancing the role of the rags-to-riches heroine in the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Christmas season of Cinderella, which opens at the Aotea Centre on Wednesday night. We last saw her as Mina, Dracula's lead female role, in June. Wright is the first to admit that Mina came a lot more easily to her than poor little Cinders.

"I am a drama queen at heart," she confesses. "I loved the pure drama of Dracula. I am a really easy-going person normally, and I think I get rid of a lot of aggression out on stage.

"Cinderella is stuck in a pretty horrible situation in the beginning of the story. I really had to think hard about how to relate to that and how to make her worthy of sympathy, without her becoming too pathetic."

The difficulty of the task certainly did not show on opening night in Wellington, in October, with Wright evoking just the right blend of vulnerability and magic in her fairytale character.

Her partner that night was Ou Lu and, in typical style, Wright is happy to tell what Lu really said while she sat triumphantly at his side on the ballroom-scene throne, wreathed in regal smiles and bathed in the romantic light of a new love.

"There is lots and lots of dancing in that act - in all the acts," she says. "People have these 2 1/2-second costume changes and wig changes and it is really stressful, for the helpers backstage as well.

"So when Lu finally got to sit down he was saying, 'I really hate classical ballet!' Joking, of course. And, 'My calf has got a cramp."'

This production of Cinderella, with original choreography by the late Jack Carter to Prokofiev's score, was first staged by the RNZB in 1991 and toured again in 1995. This third showing reflects a worldwide trend for Cinderella to be performed as a Christmas alternative to The Nutcracker.

"Jack Carter's choreography has millions of steps," says Peter Boyes, who has returned to the RNZB to produce the ballet. He worked alongside Carter in 1991 and again in 1995.

"It is very much in the Frederick Ashton mould, with lots of attention to shoulders and arms to get that flavour and style," he says. "The steps are intricate rather than difficult.

"But Jack Carter was an exceptionally musical choreographer and he came from a generation of people who had exceptional theatre knowledge and stagecraft. So he really knew how to tell a story."

His version of that story sticks close to the traditional. But he has replaced the fairy solos in the first act with a parade of "fantastics" - the hairdresser and tailor, jeweller and mask-maker, who return to assist in Cinderella's transformation before the ball.

"It makes a bit more of that idea of transformation," says Boyes. "Jack's idea of Cinderella was that she was a kind and good person who was being treated badly. He didn't see her as a pathetic creature.

"His whole focus was to bring the story back to the love between the prince and Cinderella. That was not allowed to be overshadowed by the roles of the stepsisters and the whole family situation. So it is a real fairy story about finding love and happiness."

In real life, Larissa Wright has found love and happiness with fellow dancer Graham Fletcher. They have been together for seven years and met while dancing for the Queensland Ballet. They joined the RNZB five years ago.

"I was 24 years old and I had gone to the Queensland Ballet straight from the Queensland Dance School," says Wright. "It was the right age to go a little further afield and explore."

In 1997 it was again time to spread their wings, and RNZB artistic director Matz Skoog suggested they try Christopher Gable's Northern Ballet Theatre and provided the introductions.

"It was the right size of company and the scale of the works interested us," says Wright.

So did Gable's more contemporary style, in which the technicalities of the dance are not allowed to intrude on the dramatic flow.

The style suited Wright, and she was just the sort of dancer Gable wanted. She and Fletcher spent three years at the Northern Ballet Theatre, before Gable died suddenly.

"I learned so much there," she says, "and not just from Christopher. There were lots of older dancers who taught me a lot. And there was the exposure to other people and other ways of working.

"I really feel I have matured as a dancer, through that experience. I am feeling better dancing now than I did when I was younger. I am 30 - but I feel 21 with experience. It just feels like a great time to be dancing."

Wright and Fletcher travelled around Europe when they could, and took classes wherever they found themselves. It was not always a positive experience, says Wright. "There is a lot of competition around and some snaky dancers, and that doesn't make for a nice atmosphere at times." When Gable died, the Northern Ballet Theatre changed dramatically. Wright and Fletcher were ready to head home to Wellington.

"We love it here," says Wright. "We love the city and we love the company. It is close to our families, just across the Tasman, and it is where we want to be. We are hoping to buy a house here, when we have some time to look around, over Christmas."

* Cinderella, Royal New Zealand Ballet, at the Aotea Centre, December 6-10, and the Founders Theatre, Hamilton, December 13-14.