Cendrillon

With Cendrillon, choreographer Julien Lestel delivers a deeply intense and contemporary reinterpretation of the ballet. Far from carriages and castles, Julien Lestel transposes the fairytale into an oppressive corporate universe ruled by an authoritarian and caricatural mother. Cinderella is a subordinate employee here, harassed by her stepmother and stepsisters.

The choreography, possessing striking physicality, alternates between collective brilliance and passionate duets. The ball scenes, transposed into the incandescent world of a contemporary tech party, explode with energy, speed, and tension, carrying the dancers into a genuine choreographic fugue where bodies cross paths, attract, and collide with hypnotic intensity.

In this modern vision, Cinderella is no longer a fragile heroine waiting to be saved. She becomes a fighting woman, confronting psychological violence, oppression, and domination, until she finds the strength to rise up and reinvent herself. Every gesture, every movement reflects this inner battle. The godmother becomes the conscience of her desire for emancipation and her quest for freedom.

The Prince, founder of a tech startup, a charismatic and deeply human figure, accompanies this metamorphosis through sensual and soulful duets of great emotional intensity, revealing two beings recognizing each other in their fragility as much as in their desire for freedom. The twelve strokes of midnight do not chime the end of magic, but are the echoes of endured harassment; their meeting, more than a simple "happy end", opens the path toward healing.

The music, blending the work of Sergei Prokofiev with electronic creations by Ivan Julliard, accompanies this constant tension between the outside world and interiority, submission and emancipation, classical heritage and modernity.

Ballet Julien Lestel offers a vibrant and universal work, where dance becomes a mirror of our times. A Cendrillon burning with emotion, carried by the power of bodies and the hope of rebirth.