From the ashes to the court, Cinderella is a heroine with a thousand faces, creator of her destiny.
There are more than three hundred variants of this fairy tale and it is one of the most ancient in the world.
In our research we have decided to focus on the older oral versions and on two written versions: that of the Brothers Grimm and that of La Gatta Basile's Cinderella.
But more than a research story of prince charming, Cinderella by Zaches Teatro is a fairy tale initiatory in which the problematic road to maturity passes through the detachment from the past.
Using Object theatre, dance, expressive movement, original music compositions, and puppetry, the bodies of the performers give life to characters from history in a whirlwind show full of inventions, animated by strange presences between the funny and the grotesque, with a strong visual impact. The manipulation becomes dance, furthermore, the dance evokes the ancient presence, the mysterious ritual under the ashes of the fairy tale.
The Zaches Teatro company was born in Florence in 2007. It works on the combination of various artistic languages: contemporary dance, the expressive means of puppet theater, the use of the mask, the word, the relationship between plastic movements and live music /electronic sound. In 2008, the production Faustus! Faustus! , inspired by the myth of the Faust and Golem, wins the awards for Best Innovation Show and Best Original Music at the Int. Puppet Theater Festival in Ekaterininburg 2010 (Russia); Special Prize for the original expression and fantasy at the Int. Festival of Children’s Theaters 2011 in Subotica (Serbia). The Charm of Idiocy # 1_Trilogy of vision, work inspired by the black paintings of Goya, is selected among the finalists of the Rome Equilibrio Award 2009. It wins the prize for Best Performance of the TeatarFest 2010 in Sarajevo (Bosnia); it is a finalist at the AICC 2010 (Aarhus Int. Choreography Competition) in Denmark, and it is included in the EXPLO ’2009/2010 selection of the Young Author Dance. Mal Bianco # 2_Trilogy of vision, inspired by the Manga by the Japanese master Hokusai, wins the Padua Dance Theater Perspective 2010 production award and it is selected among the finalists of the Rome 2010 Equilibrio Award, receiving the Quality Label of the European e-MIX circuit network.
Between December 2011 and January 2012, Zaches Teatro collaborates in the creation of the show "Is there anybody out there?"of the Sayeh Theater company in Tehran (Iran). In September 2013 co-produces with Teatr Kukol' of Ekaterinburg (Russia) the children's theater show Pinocchio, that wins the Best Set Design award at the VII Int. Theatre Festival "Great Petrushka" in Ekaterinburg, and the award for best scenography, costumes and masks and the prize for the best actress at the Russian national theatrical competition "Arlekin" in Omsk (Russia). Pinocchio#1_Fairy Tales Trilogy, a 2014 production, wins the Best actress award and Best stage visualization at the 22nd Int. Festival of Children’s Theater of Subotica (Serbia), and it is in the In - Box 2015 selection. In 2017 Sandokan, a show made with a group of migrants / actors residing in the Florentine territory. In 2017 Mal Bianco extracts take part in the making of the documentary of Giovanni Troilo Van Gogh under the bombs by Sky Art. Since 2016 it approaches the production of Opera for children, taking care of the staging and the direction of Puss in Boots for the Teatro Regio di Parma; Carmencita and L'Elisir d'amore for AsLiCoTeatro Sociale di Como. In 2018 the Company produces LittleRed Riding Hood#2_Fairy Tales Trilogy, that debuts in the 2018/2019 at the Metastasio Theater in Prato and was a finalist for the In-Box Verde 2019 award. In 2020, with the pandemic, in order to continue working despite the closed theaters, the Company produces the site-specific Little Red Riding Hood in the Woods for the summer, and the Sibylla Tales a digital show, designed for live streaming, that wins the call of Spazio Rossellini in Rome and ATCL Live Streaming Theater award production, to then debut in 2021 also as a live show. With Cinderella in 2021 the Fairy Tale Trilogy ends.
