En pointe fairy tale: East Mountain Dance performs 'Cinderella!' ballet at National Hispanic Cultural Center

The beloved fairy tale of overcoming adversity and hardship with the help of some loyal mice friends and a magical Fairy Godmother comes to the stage through “Cinderella!” a ballet production by East Mountain Dance.

En pointe fairy tale: East Mountain Dance performs 'Cinderella!' ballet at National Hispanic Cultural Center

Performances will be held at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25, in the Roy E. Disney Center for Performing Arts: Albuquerque Journal Theatre at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

The production, which was first premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1945, is set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev, according to the NHCC website.

“We really try to tie our winter productions into also greater life lessons,” said Jordan Slocum, owner of East Mountain Dance. “So, (with) something like ‘Cinderella’ (there is) that idea of it just takes maybe one magical moment to go from a really low place to pursuing your dreams. And, we try to talk about that through the rehearsal process and through the storyline.”

The storyline follows Cinderella, a young woman dressed in rags, who is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. Through the encouragement of her Fairy Godmother and some special magic, Cinderella attends a spectacular ball at the palace and later returns home to find herself awakening from a dream that is about to become reality, according to the NHCC website.

“We have this beautiful garden scene where you’ve got fairies for each season,” Slocum said. “You have spring, summer, autumn and winter. And in order to give some of our younger dancers more stage time and more of that performance experience, instead of having one individual fairy for each of those variations, we added dancers to each piece. So, three out of the four seasons has a main fairy with their core dancers. You have spring fairy with spring blossoms, summer fairy with summer flowers. Our autumn fairy is actually three fairies, and then we have our winter fairies, which are cute little snowflakes.”

“Cinderella!” performers are either East Mountain Dance students or faculty.

“We’re really blessed to have a great group of kids where our studio kind of has that nice, small town family feel to it, but with really good, rich training,” Slocum said. “All of the dancers in the show are East Mountain Dance students, and then there’s a couple faculty in the show as well. So the age group ranges from (age) 6 through adults, which is a pretty mix, and everyone’s getting to see the different levels of dancing, which is really inspirational for the younger students.”

East Mountain Dance students come from small towns including Edgewood, Tijeras, Moriarty and Estancia, and performing in Albuquerque at the NHCC is a great and exciting opportunity for them, according to Slocum.

“I feel like so many of them, especially being from more of that small town community, it gives them this outreach opportunity to not just be a show, but to be part of a show,” Slocum said. “They’re getting to experience a different level of independence.”