Cinderella Tickets

Beijing National Grand Theater (NCPA), Beijing, China

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At the moment, no Cinderella events are scheduled in Beijing National Grand Theater (NCPA). Click here to check out the current Beijing National Grand Theater (NCPA) events.

Important Info

Type: Ballet

City: Beijing, China

Duration: 2h 20min with 1 interval

Acts: 3

Intervals: 1

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast

Performers

Choose the date to see the peformers

Overview

The National Ballet of China, founded in December 1959, have top-notch artistic personnel trained at professional art institutes. With the care and support of people from all walks of life, the National Ballet of China keeps drawing on the strengths of different art genres with Russian skills as its core. In addition to ushering in a high number of world classics, including Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Giselle, Carmen, Onegin, The Firebird, The Little Mermaid, La Bayadere, Cinderella, and The Jewels, the National Ballet of China has independently produced a great many masterworks with distinct national characteristics, such as The Red Detachment of Women, The Blessing, The Yellow River, Raise the Red Lantern, Peony Pavilion, Celebrating the New Year, The Crane Whisperer, Dunhuang, The Nine-Coloured Deer, etc., opening up a road of development and creation for the Chinese ballet art that features an amazing fusion of the classical with the modern and the national with the international.

Over the past 60 years, the National Ballet of China has made remarkable achievements in personnel training, repertoire expansion, ballet popularisation and education, etc. Many of its members, including ballet dancers, musicians and stage artists, have stood out conspicuously in various international professional competitions and among global superstars. In its repertoire are more than 200 Chinese and foreign ballets, some of which have been listed as Chinese art classics and international cultural brands.

As a famous ballet troupe with wide international influence, the National Ballet of China, on the one hand, plays an important role in promoting international cultural exchanges and Chinese humanistic feelings. On the other hand, it strives to give high-level performances for the Chinese audience and popularise art on campus, in communities and among children. Adhering to the spirit of “solidarity, pragmatism, self-improvement and hard struggle”, the Ballet is taking big strides forward with high morale along the older generation of dedicators’ footsteps to realise its century-old dream. FENG Ying is the presiding managing director and artistic director of the National Ballet of China.

History

Premiere of this production: 21 November 1945, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

Cinderella is a ballet composed by Sergei Prokofiev to a scenario by Nikolai Volkov. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception.

Synopsis

Act I

Cinderella, a young woman whose domineering step-mother forces her to act as a servant in her own home, helps her step-mother and two step-sisters to prepare for the Spring Ball, at which it is rumoured that the Prince will choose his bride-to-be. As the two step-sisters work together to produce a new shawl, they get into an argument over who will wear it, and end up tearing it in two through their bickering. The pair storm off, while the step-mother orders Cinderella to clear up the remnants and finish her chores, as her father returns home from business. Since her father's remarriage, Cinderella has had to sleep by the kitchen fireplace, leaving her nothing to wear but rags covered in ashes. Her father has never moved past the grief of his first wife's death, and though he is concerned for his daughter, he is just as much under the step-mother's control as Cinderella herself is. Their brief peace is interrupted, however, as the mother and sisters reenter and begin ordering them about. During supper, a beggar woman turns up, asking for shelter. The sisters and mother try to chase her off, but Cinderella offers her a place by the kitchen fire and an old pair of slippers. The beggar thanks her for her kindness and departs, leaving the preparations for the ball to resume. After choosing dresses and a quick dancing lesson, the family finally sets off for the night with the father reluctantly in tow, leaving Cinderella behind.

Although lonely at first, she cheers herself up by dancing with her broom, imagining the Prince himself has asked her for a dance. She is surprised, however, when the beggar woman appears out of nowhere, wishing to return the slippers with her thanks. To Cinderella's amazement, the shoes have been transformed into dancing slippers of glass. The beggar woman throws off her disguise and reveals herself as Cinderella's fairy godmother, come to grant her wish of going to the ball. Summoning the fairies of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter for assistance, she turns Cinderella's rags into a beautiful dress, a pumpkin and mice into a carriage and horses, and grasshoppers and dragonflies into a retinue of footmen. As she is about to leave, however, the fairy godmother warns her that the magic will only last until midnight, at which time the spell will break, and everything will revert to its original form. Only the glass slippers will remain as a gift for her kindness. She then summons twelve dwarfs, who will appear to repeat her message if she has not left by midnight. With this warning in mind, Cinderella departs for the ball.

Act II

The Spring Ball is in full swing, with guests arriving from all over the kingdom and beyond to dance and pay respect to the Prince. The two step-sisters attempt to win favour with the royal court by showing off their dancing skills, but have less than successful results, much to their mother's dismay. The Prince then joins the celebrations, but finding state events such as the Spring Ball dull, and being reluctant to enter a marriage without love, he declines any offers for a dance, particularly in the case of the obnoxious step-sisters.

At this point, Cinderella arrives at the palace, transformed beyond recognition into a beautifully dressed princess. The Prince, along with everyone else, is entranced by her beauty and charm, and for the first time, he asks for a dance. As the evening passes, the two become inseparable; Cinderella quickly becomes beloved by the entire court for her graciousness and charm, while the Prince is unusually enthusiastic and cheery in her company. When refreshments are served, he gives her the honour of taking one of three oranges, a delicacy imported to the kingdom from a far-off land. Cinderella offers the other two oranges to her step-sisters, who are so flattered by the attention that they do not recognize the beautiful stranger as their sister. The Prince takes Cinderella out to the royal gardens for an evening walk, where they dance and proclaim the love blossoming between them.

As they return to the ballroom for the next waltz, Cinderella has completely forgotten about the time in her happiness. However, at the first stroke of midnight, the twelve dwarfs spring from the great palace clock and remind Cinderella of her godmother's warning. Terrified of being unmasked as a lowly servant in rags, she flees from the ballroom to the astonishment of the other guests. Though the Prince pursues her, she vanishes into the night moments before the spell breaks, losing one of her glass slippers in her haste and panic. The Prince is heartbroken at the thought of losing his love so soon after discovering her, but upon finding the lost slipper, he vows not to rest until he is once again reunited with her.

Act III

The morning after the ball, the Prince summons every shoemaker in the kingdom, in order to find out who the slipper was made for. However, none of them claim to have crafted the shoe, or sold it to anybody recently, and he concludes that the princess must be from a foreign land. His desperate search brings him first to the Mediterranean, then to the Orient, and lands further beyond. After travelling across the world and meeting various beautiful princesses with no success, the Prince begins to search his own kingdom, trying the slipper on every maiden who attended the ball.

Back at Cinderella's home, love has allowed the Prince to defy the laws of time and space; though she is only awakening the morning after the ball, he has already traveled the world and back again in search of his lost love. Upon waking, Cinderella initially believes that the events of the previous night were only a dream. As she relives some of the dances of the ball, she discovers the remaining glass slipper and realizes that it was all true. At breakfast, the step-sisters reminisce about the ball, and argue about who made the greater impression on the Prince at the ball. Their fighting is interrupted when the father and step-mother hurry in with the news that the Prince is on his way to their house, desperately trying a glass slipper on every girl he encounters. Upon his arrival, he tries the slipper on the two step-sisters, to no avail. The step-mother, however, demands to be given a chance and tries to force her foot into the shoe, ordering Cinderella to help her. As she bends down to assist, the remaining slipper falls from her pocket and the Prince finally recognizes Cinderella for who she is. As Cinderella successfully tries on both glass slippers, her step-family beg for her forgiveness, which she happily bestows upon them. Overjoyed to have rediscovered each other, Cinderella and the Prince are then transported away to a secret garden by the fairy godmother, where they confess their love for one another and are happily married.

Venue Info

Beijing National Grand Theater (NCPA) - Beijing
2 W Chang'an Ave

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) is an arts centre containing an opera house in Beijing, People's Republic of China. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. Construction started in December 2001 and the inaugural concert was held in December 2007.

The exterior of the theater is a titanium-accented glass dome that is completely surrounded by a man-made lake. It is said to look like an egg floating on water, or a water drop. It was designed as an iconic feature, something that would be immediately recognizable.

The dome measures 212 meters in east–west direction, 144 meters in north–south direction, and is 46 meters high. The main entrance is at the north side. Guests arrive in the building after walking through a hallway that goes underneath the lake. The titanium shell is broken by a glass curtain in north–south direction that gradually widens from top to bottom.

The location, immediately to the west of Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, and near the Forbidden City, combined with the theatre's futuristic design, created considerable controversy. Paul Andreu countered that although there is indeed value in ancient traditional Chinese architecture, Beijing must also include modern architecture, as the capital of the country and an international city of great importance. His design, with large open space, water, trees, was specially designed to complement the red walls of ancient buildings and the Great Hall of the People, in order to melt into the surroundings as opposed to standing out against them.

Internally, there are three major performance halls:

The Opera Hall is used for operas, ballet, and dances and seats 2,416 people.
The Music Hall is used for concerts and recitals and seats 2,017 people.
The Theatre Hall is used for plays and the Beijing opera. It has 1,040 seats.
The NCPA also distributes filmed and recorded performances of its concerts, plays and operas through the in-house label NCPA Classics, established in 2016.

The initial planned cost of the theatre was 2.688 billion yuan. When the construction had completed, the total cost rose to more than CNY3.2 billion. The major cause of the cost increase was a delay for reevaluation and subsequent minor changes as a precaution after a Paris airport terminal building collapsed. The cost has been a major source of controversy because many believed that it is nearly impossible to recover the investment. When the cost is averaged out, each seat is worth about half a million CNY. The Chinese government answered that the theater is not a for profit venture.

The government sanctioned study completed in 2004 by the Research Academy of Economic & Social Development of the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, of the upkeep costs of the building were publicized in domestic Chinese media:

The water and electricity bills and the cleaning cost for the external surface would be at least tens of millions CNY, and with another maintenance cost, the total could easily exceed one billion CNY. Therefore, at least 80 percent of the annual operational costs must be subsidized by the government for at least the first three years after the opening, and for the rest of its operational life, at least 60 percent of the annual operational cost must be subsidized by the government.

The director of the art committee of the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the standing committee member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Mr Wu Zuqiang (吴祖强) and the publicist / deputy director of the National Centre for the Performing Arts Mr Deng (邓一江) have announced that 70 percent of the tickets would be sold at low price for ordinary citizens, while 10% of the tickets would be sold at relatively expensive prices for separate market segments, and the 60% of annual operating cost needed to be subsidized by the government would be divided between the central government and the Beijing municipal government.