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‘Cinderella’ has inspired many different incarnations

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend. Do you know where your happily-ever-after is?

It’s as close as The Smith Center, where Nevada Ballet Theatre’s “Cinderella” brings the fairy-tale favorite back to life for two performances.

NBT has staged “Cinderella” before, but this weekend’s production features new choreography by artistic director James Canfield and ballet mistress Tara Foy, whose main job involves rehearsing the company.

Foy’s participation as “Cinderella” co-choreographer represents a dream come true, she says, describing it as “a thousand-and-one percent collaboration between the two of us” following a rehearsal at NBT’s Summerlin studios.

Canfield “is wonderful with the pas de deux and the beautiful waltz partnering,” Foy notes, while’s she’s “in charge of bringing the characters to life,” she explains. “To me, telling the story is the most important part.”

Yet when it comes to “Cinderella,” it’s more like retelling than telling, given that “everyone knows about Cinderella,” Foy adds.

After all this time, they should.

It’s been five centuries since the first written European versions of the tale appeared — one in Italy, one in France.

The latter rendition, by Charles Perrault, has become the definitive “Cinderella” — or, to use the French translation, “Cendrillon.” (The Brothers Grimm’s decidedly darker version, “Aschenputtel,” appeared in the 19th century.)

Since then, Cinderella has inspired literally hundreds of different versions, from the opera house (in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” Massenet’s “Cendrillon”) to the movie house (notably Disney’s 1950 animated “Cinderella” to Drew Barrymore in 1998’s “Ever After: A Cinderella Story”) to the Broadway stage, where Cinderella joins several fellow storybook characters in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” — which made it to the big screen in 2014, more than 25 years after its 1987 Broadway debut.

With its post-feminist spirit, “Ever After’s” Cinderella (played by Barrymore) hardly seems a fairy-tale character at all. There’s no fairy godmother to help her (unless you count artist Leonardo DaVinci, who turns up to dispense wise advice). And she doesn’t first meet her prince (who’s at least as snobbish as he is charming) at a ball; instead, she saves him from forest marauders.

That sort of pluck also informs Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” who wound up on Broadway in 2013 — after TV appearances in 1957 (alias Julie Andews), 1965 (Lesley Anne Warren) and 1997 (with Brandy in the title role and Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother).

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane gave Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” her Broadway makeover, altering the original character’s “passive” qualities, he told the Review-Journal before the musical’s Smith Center visit last year.

In addition to transforming Ella into “an active female lead,” Beane eliminated the “unrealistic goals for people” he thought the original “Cinderella” set: “If you’re pretty, you’re going to get everything you want. And if you just cry, a fairy godmother” will come along to make sure you do. (In Beane’s revamp, the fairy godmother says Cinderella herself must make the magic happen.)

Even the live-action heroine of Disney’s 2015 “Cinderella” remake (Lily James) maintains her principles — and wins her prince — with such sensible pronouncements as “Just because it’s what’s done doesn’t mean it’s what should be done!”

Those assertive, can-do Cinderellas might not recognize their perpetually ambivalent “Into the Woods” counterpart (played in the movie by Anna Kendrick).

For one thing, her tale has much more in common with Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s grim version: no fairy godmother, gold rather than glass slippers — and much more gore.

For another, this Cinderella always seems stuck — and would be even if the soles of her golden slippers weren’t glued to the palace steps.

As she wonders whether to stay or go, she sings these scintillating Sondheim lyrics: “It’s my first big decision; the choice isn’t easy to make. To arrive at a ball is exciting and all — once you’re there, though, it’s scary. Better run along home …” On the other hand, “thinking it through, things don’t have to collide. I know what my decision is — which is not to decide.”

Despite their differences, every Cinderella endures hardship and heartbreak before her happy ending.

But the goal of NBT’s production is “to be as light-hearted as possible,” Foy notes, citing “the magic, the enchantment” as key elements in the production.

That fairytale magic also inspires Emma McGirr, NBT’s Cinderella.

I grew up watching the Disney version,” she notes, remember the moment “when she gets transformed, with her ballgown,” and thinking, ” ‘Aah … someday.’ “

No wonder her “favorite part is the entrance in the ballroom scene,” the dancer comments, noting how Sergei Prokofiev’s classic score “sounds so twinkly and untouchable,” capturing “the beauty at that moment,” when Cinderella’s “finally feeling” she’s where she belongs.

Cinderella gets to that point with the help of her fairy godmother (danced by Christina Ghiardi) — who, in the ballet, initially appears as a beggar woman asking for shelter. She receives it from Cinderella after the latter’s two bratty stepsisters, the vain one (Leigh Collins) and the prissy one (Madison Ewing) try to chase the beggar woman away.

Cinderella suffers a great deal at the hands of her stepsisters — and her scheming stepmother (danced by Mercedes Rice) — but “there is a strength” within her “that’s so beautiful,” McGirr comments.

Cinderella’s also “relatable to a lot of people,” she adds, noting that “everyone has something in their life they are struggling with.”

Even with those struggles, Cinderella manages to be both “a compassionate and passionate person,” Foy adds — one who retains a generous, benevolent spirit, even while her stepmother and stepsisters heap abuse and scorn upon her. “She’s really a princess deep down.”

Conveying those emotions without words represents a decided challenge, McGirr acknowledges.

“You have to marry the dancing with the acting,” she explains. “And even when you’re not dancing, you’re still involved with the storytelling.”

And that story — like all true fairy tales — has it all, Foy observes: “It’s funny, it’s drama, it’s love, it’s humor.”

And when it comes time for Cinderella to turn heads and win hearts at the ball — especially the prince’s (danced by Sergio Alvarez) — “I want everyone in the audience to” gasp, she says. “I want there to be gasping moments.”

After all, who wants a fairy-tale ending that doesn’t leave you breathless?

— Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.

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