Pacific Northwest Ballet – Cinderella 
Digital Stream – Recorded at Seattle Center’s McCaw Hall
February 12-16, 2026

By Steve Sucato

There was a lot to love about Pacific Northwest Ballet’s remounting of Kent Stowell’s ballet Cinderella. The 32-year-old production, which debuted in 1994, was blessed with clear storytelling, heartfelt performances by PNB’s dancers, sumptuous sets and costumes, and the kind of storybook magic that has kept Cinderella a perennial favorite with ballet audiences worldwide.

As with most Cinderella ballets, Stowell’s was based on the familiar 1697 version of the fairy tale by Charles Perrault and was set to Sergei Prokofiev’s 1945 score for the ballet, albeit slightly altered. In it, Cinderella, having lost her mother to illness and having had her father remarry, is relegated to a life of servitude by her scornful stepmother and two stepsisters.

The two-and-a-half-hour digitally streamed ballet in three acts began with principal dancer Leta Biasucci as Cinderella, clutching a broom handle and daydreaming of grand balls and dancing with a prince. Her daydream was interrupted by the appearance of a cloaked beggar woman, whom Cinderella offered a place by the fire to rest. In the firelight, Cinderella noticed something familiar about the old beggar, prompting her to retrieve a locket with a picture of her mother.  

Cinderella’s affable father (Dylan Wald) came into the room and joined her in a dance of remembrance of Cinderella’s late mother and dreaming of a brighter future. When the pair returned their attentions to the beggar woman, she magically disappeared up the fireplace chimney as Cinderella’s stepmother and sisters entered the room.

In these opening scenes and throughout the remainder of the ballet, Biasucci as Cinderella captivated with an innocence and heart-of-gold kindness that was endearing. 

The rest of the first act played out familiarly, with the stepsisters, Amanda Morgan and Kali Kleiman, preparing for the Prince’s royal ball, clumsily fighting over gowns and shoes, and making a mess of their dance lesson due to their obvious lack of coordination and grace.

Stowell takes a less grotesque approach to the stepsisters than other ballet productions tend to. The women are not physically abusive toward Cinderella; rather, they are more dismissive of her. So too was Lily Wills as the stepmother, who took every opportunity to treat her as second-class, such as when Cinderella begged her father to let her go to the ball, and Wills forbade it. Biasucci’s heartbroken reaction and tears in that moment left the viewer with a powerful sense of sympathy for her character. 

The first act concluded with Cinderella’s godmother/good fairy, portrayed by Melisa Guilliams, coming to her rescue to make it possible for her to attend the ball. Here, Stowell’s production, unlike many, leans into its fairy-tale component, with an entourage of fairies representing the seasons accompanying Guilliams to dance for Cinderella and assist in her ball transformation.   

Aston Edwards, as the Summer Fairy, zipped through a variation filled with turns and hops. In contrast, Juliet Prine’s Autumn Fairy variation was slower-paced and highlighted by delicate leg extensions and poses. Then, Yuki Takahashi was all smiles in buoyant jumps and leaps as the Spring Fairy. The dances concluded with Madison Rayn Abeo in a measured and graceful performance as the Winter Fairy.

The second act opened on the Prince’s ball with twelve male-female couples, costumed in crimson, waltzing amid scenic designer Tony Straiges’s stage setting evocative of French art and architecture from the 16th through 18th centuries. 

A court jester moved among the ball’s arriving guests to provide comic relief and to shield the Prince, portrayed by soon-to-be retiring principal dancer Lucien Postlewaite, from unwanted encounters, such as with the stepsisters whose comedic antics continued as they flirted and stumbled about vying for the Prince’s attention. 

Postlewaite, as the Prince, was textbook princely and regal. During the scene, he made attempts to be convivial with the guests but was ultimately uninterested in the festivities until the unexpected arrival of the newly “princessified” Cinderella. Instantly smitten, Postlewaite and Biasucci launched into a gleeful pas de deux in which they each danced for one another in lively, showy choreography. 

The ball’s entertainers then arrived in the form of costumed dancers: an Evil Sprite (Zsilas Michael Hughes), a Harlequin (Mark Cuddihee), and a Columbine (Takahashi). Hughes’ frightful Evil Sprite solo was filled with endurance-testing jumps and leaps, and proved the best of the entertainment.

After another delightful pas de deux between Cinderella and the Prince that was everything she had previously daydreamed of and featured nicely executed partnered holds and lifts, the second act closed with the usual stroke of midnight dash by Cinderella to exit the ball, and included her losing a slipper. 

The ballet then wrapped up in Act 3, with the Prince going door-to-door in the village looking for the owner of the slipper, and The Fairy Godmother and her entourage returning once more. Cinderella is eventually revealed as the slipper’s owner; a tiara is placed on her head; and we get the happily-ever-after ending befitting this marvelous, life-affirming production.