As a ballet professor with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, I always seek to reach beyond the classroom. In addition to teaching my regular ballet class, men’s class, and pas de deux, I love to create ballets for my students, utilizing their abilities and enabling them to confront their weaknesses. I seek to create steps that look good on the dancers and are difficult as to improve their technique.

Eight years ago, I choreographed IU’s current production of The Nutcracker, and since then I have had the desire to do another big production, like Cinderella. The work has been a colossal collaboration. IU's David Higgins designed sets and elaborate costumes; the orchestra is being led this year by IU's Maestro David Effron. This enormous production, with over two hours of music, could never have been realized without the cleaning help of Virginia Cesbron, Guoping Wang and Doricha Sales.

During the projects inception, I was given a generous grant from Arts and Humanities and was able to spend the summer of 2004 studying in the New York Dance Library and in Paris. I wanted to choreograph a very classical Cinderella, not the vaudevillian version that so many companies choose to perform, casting men as the stepsisters. I found that the Russian version was in keeping with the tradition of a female stepsister and the classical way of choreographing that I wanted to employ: using pointe work for the stepsisters with a demanding humoresque technique. Other artistic decisions I made included reinstating the traveling section of the score, where the Prince goes to Spain and the Orient in search of Cinderella. For “The Seasons,” I used the corps de ballet and soloists, whereas many companies employ only soloists.

Prokofiev wrote music designed for ballet dancers to demonstrate our art, containing beautiful waltzes, mazurkas, adagios, and variations. Above all, Prokofiev wanted to express with the music the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, its birth and blossoming, the obstacles in its path, and finally the fulfillment of the dream. I sense three basic themes: one of Cinderella exploited, a second reflecting her purity, chastity, and wistfulness, and thirdly her state of being in love, where she beams with happiness.