Cendrillon - Ballet Julien Lestel

CENDRILLON - Ballet Julien Lestel Genre: Ballet, contemporary dance In the tradition of Jirí Kylián, Ohad Naharin or even Crystal Pite, choreographer Julien Lestel forges a singular style with his resolutely modern, distinctive, aesthetic and powerful creations. With Cendrillon, choreographer Julien Lestel offers a deeply intense and contemporary reinterpretation of the ballet. Far from carriages and castles, Julien Lestel transposes the tale into an oppressive corporate world ruled by an authoritarian and caricatural mother. Cendrillon is a junior employee there, harassed by her stepmother and stepsisters.

The choreography, with a striking physicality, alternates collective flashes and passionate duets. The ball scenes, transposed into the incandescent setting of a contemporary tech party, explode with energy, speed and tension, carrying the dancers into a true choreographic fugue where bodies cross, attract and collide with mesmerising intensity.

In this modern vision, Cendrillon is no longer a fragile heroine waiting to be rescued. She becomes a woman fighting back, enduring psychological violence, oppression and domination, until she finds the strength to get back up and reinvent herself. Every gesture, every movement conveys this inner struggle. The fairy godmother becomes the conscience of her desire for emancipation and her quest for freedom.

The Prince, founder of a start-up, a charismatic and deeply human figure, accompanies this metamorphosis in sensual, committed duets of great emotional intensity, revealing two beings who recognise themselves in their fragility as much as in their desire for freedom. The twelve strokes of midnight do not sound the end of a magic spell but are the echoes of the harassment endured; their meeting is more than a simple “happy end”, opening the way to a reconstruction.