Announcing: The Tailor of Gloucester Ballet

The Cincinnati Kinderballet proudly presents a new ballet for the winter 2009 performance season:  The Tailor of Gloucester!

The Tailor of Gloucester is said to be Beatrix Potter’s favorite story, published in 1903. In England, it is traditionally read to children on Christmas Eve, just before bed time. The Story is set at Christmas time with a poor and frail tailor set to finish a coat for the Mayor of Gloucester’s wedding on Christmas morning.

After cutting out all the pieces for the coat, the tailor finds that he does not have enough cherry silk twist to finish. With his last 4 pennies, he sends his cat Simpkin to buy food and enough cherry twist to finish the coat. While the cat is gone, the tailor frees the mice from teacups where Simpkin has imprisoned them. When Simpkin returns and finds his mice gone, he hides the twist in anger. When the tailor falls ill, the mice save the day by completing the coat.

The ballet is brought to life by members of the Cincinnati Kinderballet ranging in age from age 8 through adult, with Emily Gardner and Elizabeth Brock sharing the role of Simpkin, and Sheri Heffern as the Tailor.   Choreography is by Conni Berns, Laura Baresel, Celia Wallen, Lauren Canfield, and Laura Hughes.   

Music includes more contemporary works of Benjamin Britton and Patrick Doyle along side traditional Renaissance music and plenty of traditional and ancient carols from the Gloucester Wassail, The Holly and The Ivy, and Three Ships to lesser known 14th Century works like “Wolcum Yole” and “There is No Rose.” The end result pays homage to the spirit of Beatrix Potter’s work.

“From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes: all the old songs that I ever heard of and some that I don’t know…”

For more information please contact the School of Ballet at 513 481-0092, or visit us at www.avoballet.org.