A Cinderella draped in a dress made from plastic scraps, trash bags floating gracefully to the tunes of Prokofiev: welcome to Cinderella. Recyclable ballet that travels across France to raise awareness among young audiences about the issue of plastic waste.

“Plastic is a vector and a way to show that we can create beauty with what is today the worst waste, the biggest scourge of pollution. And it’s also a way to use plastic in a poetic way so that students and teachers can discuss pollution together,” explains Stéphane Vitrano, long-distance companion of choreographer Philippe Lafeuille (CAR) to AFP. /MEN, TUTU), at the origin of this ballet.

During February, the show stopped in Fos-sur-mer (Bouches-du-Rhône), as part of an edition of the Les Élancées dance and circus festival focusing on the preservation of the planet. Fos-sur-Mer, a town that knows what pollution means with its blast furnaces, the industrial port of Fos-Marseille and its petrochemical industry… at the origin of plastic production.

“Cinderella is a ballet that was created twelve years ago, before the success of TUTU. Ecology wasn’t a theme that really interested many people at the time,” adds the dancer. “By reopening the trunks, Philippe Lafeuille and costume designer Corine Petitpierre realized that the costumes had not moved. So they said to themselves “Come on, let’s put together a Cinderella, a recyclable ballet, we recycle the costumes, we recycle the ballet and we redo a creation.” In a setting of plastic bottles, six dancers revisit Charles Perrault’s tale to the tunes of Prokofiev and hip-hop, that of a slut turned princess who goes to the ball in a pumpkin transformed into a carriage.

In the room, the ah! and the oh! schoolchildren burst out at the unexpected poetry of a garbage bag, the strangeness of masks made of capsules or even the comedy of a mop that serves as a headdress. “What was interesting was to see that this plastic had not moved and that we could perhaps reassemble the piece, recycle the plastic, recycle the costumes, hence the idea of ​​Cinderella. Recyclable ballet, which was not the name of ballet twelve years ago,” adds Stéphane Vitrano.

Around thirty dates for Cinderella. Recyclable ballet runs over the 2023/24 season.