Cinderella (Vienna Festival Ballet tour)

Sheila Styles choreographed "Cinderella" for Vienna Festival Ballet nearly 20 years ago. It uses the music Rossini wrote for his operatic version of the story with additions from various overtures and instrumental works arranged by Chris Nicolls.

When the curtain goes up, an exhausted Cinderella (Michaela Griffin) and her cat Adelina (Perdita-Jayne Lancaster) are asleep while a trio of mice (wearing excellent animal masks) frolic. Adelina is a near relation of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat with an air of bridging two separate worlds – and giving a new definition to pas de chat.

Stepsisters Clarinda (Jodie McKnight) and Thisbe (Sandra Serey Sampedro) with their irritated mother (Kymberleigh Cowley) soon put Cinderella in her place while ogling Prince Ramiro (as they think). Of course Ramiro (Joshua Barwick) and Dandini (Vince William Smart) have swopped clothes so that the prince can pass unnoticed among his subjects.

The scene changes to a forest near Cinderella's mother's grave. Here she meets her Fairy Godmother (Emily-Joy Smith) and they have a delicate duet in which each becomes the other's mirror image in step and gesture. Griffin is a lyrical dancer who also projects personality; this Cinderella is no walk-over. A horde of fauns and autumnal woodland nymphs take over proceedings.

A pre-recorded score by a Slovakian orchestra under Nicolls means that the dancers have no chance to vary tempi. It's a tribute to company artistic director Peter Mallek and ballet mistress Emily Hufton that the footwork is so neat. The floorcloth at the performance I saw didn't deaden the noise of the boards underneath it and landings from jumps on pointe were both very audible and perfectly synchronised.

The final scene is a sequence of divertissements in the grand tradition. An allegro pas de trois for Laura Quinn, Bernadette Patterson and Cowley is particularly attractive and the sequence of variations which end the ballet for Griffin and Barwick display her grace and extension as well as his ability to jump and to turn.

Cinderella was reviewed at the Hawthorne Theatre, Welwyn Garden City and continues on national tour until 1 June.