If one quality characterises Christopher Wheeldon’s career – which ranges from the Royal Ballet to Broadway and many points in between – it is his desire to create work that audiences can lose themselves in. As someone who grew up in rural England and fell in love with dance completely out of the blue, watching Frederick Ashton’s chickens in a television screening of La Fille Mal Gardée, he has a contagious delight in the wonder of it all.
His Cinderella, restaged in the round for English National Ballet’s season in the unforgiving arena of the Royal Albert Hall, is a case in point. Wheeldon’s intelligence and invention combine to make a story that will effortlessly entrance, rewarding on a grand and an intimate scale.
