Clayton Center raises bar with 'Cinderella' ballet

MARYVILLE, Tenn. — Beautiful dances. Comic episodes. A fairy tale story of a girl and her prince.

The Appalachian Ballet is telling the story of "Cinderella" in its version of the classic ballet this weekend. The ballet company's two shows are 7:30 p.m. April 16 and 2 p.m. April 17 in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theater at the Clayton Center for the Arts. The three-act performance is 90 minutes with an intermission between the first and second acts.

The ballet company is one of the resident artists at the center on the Maryville College campus. Adult tickets are $15 or $20; students and senior citizens get $5 off those prices. Tickets are available at the Clayton Center box office, 865-981-8590, or Knoxville Tickets, 865-656-4444.

The dancers in the cast of 60 will perform to Sergei Prokofiev's 1945 classical ballet score. Appalachian Ballet Artistic Director Amy Moore Morton created all original choreography to go with music.

Morton says the production is lavish and on the scale of the ballet's traditional holiday "Nutcracker." Fairies, which represent each of the four seasons, help transform Cinderella for the prince's ball. Each dancing fairy gives Cinderella a gift, including her glass slippers and the pumpkin that turns into her carriage.

Dancing the title role is Kylie Morton, who danced for two years with the North Carolina Dance Theatre in Charlotte. Chicagoan Ted Seymour, who played the Snow King and Arabian Prince in "The Nutcracker," dances the role of the prince.

There's also comedy on pointe shoes. Real-life sisters and dancers Brittany and Chandler Blum play Cinderella's mean stepsisters. They dance and act their roles with comic flair and aren't afraid to roll on the stage while fighting, Morton says.

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