Maguy Marin's highly original and magical version of the Cinderella story, as conceived for and performed by the
Lyon National Opera Ballet, was an unparalleled success through its own world tour. Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times said that Marin's "vision reaches back into the universals of everyone's childhood - the hurts and joys resonate here with touching depth."
The characters in her beautifully child-like version of the ballet are live dolls, with real human feelings projected upon them in the way children identify with their real playthings. The story unfolds within a doll's house set - The Fairy Godmother resembles a robot, Cinderella goes to the ball in a toy car and the Prince goes in search of his new love on a rocking horse...
"Ms. Marin is a modern-dance experimentalist, and the Lyon National Opera Ballet has been in the forefront of companies encouraging such hybrids. Here she dresses the dancers in doll masks and upper-body padding, and turns the whole scenario into a fairy tale both childlike and scary as seen through a child's eyes. The choreography, devoid of point work, is witty and ingenious. For those with a venturesome spirit, willing to see her vision as akin to the masks and costumes and puppetry of Asia, this is a treat."
- John Rockwell, New York Times
"This is not Prokofiev's Cinderella but Maguy Marin's version - a brilliantly conceived one at that."
- New York Times
