Thomas Nola-Rion

PROVIDENCE —Cinderella is surreal.

The Festival Ballet Providence production, which opened last night at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, is not your typical telling of the fairy tale. It’s dark and stark. It’s modernist and minimalist, interpretive and imaginative.

It’s Viktor Plotnikov at it again.

The guest choreographer has taken the story and reduced it, stylized it and made it undeniably his. The choreography is quirky. The props are few. And the meaning is of your making.

The three-act, two-hour show challenges viewers to decide what they’re seeing and to make meaning of metaphors, whether they be movements or objects. It’s as though Salvador Dali designed the dance, and Pablo Picasso produced the sets.

For those wanting to enter a wondrous world, this Cinderella does offer moments of magic, from Cinderella’s dress that changes color in an instant, to big clear bubbles that appear in the air, electrified with color.

Everyone knows the story. A good girl has a bad step-family. An unmarried prince throws a match-making ball. Time’s up. The curfew comes. True love goes looking.

Leticia Guerrero plays Cinderella, who wears a drab knee-length gray dress. Mark Harootian is her father. And Vilia Putrius is her evil stepmother, dressed in white and black, kind of like Cruella de Vil. On this particular night, Erica Chipp and Lauren Kennedy play the stepsisters, who take after their mother, wearing bold and loud white-and-black.

The haughty and imperious personality of the stepmother and stepsisters is well conveyed in their movements, walking on pointe shoes, listing forward and, sometimes, making neck-pecking movements like a bunch of hens.

The costumes, which were designed by Haverhill Leach and Mihailo Djuric, Festival’s artistic director, are contemporary. And everyone is depicted in low and dramatic light, designed by Alan Pickart and Deb Sullivan.

Using found objects on stage, provided by set designer Pickart — two square boxes, two cones and one rectangular board — Cinderella builds a hearth, which only becomes apparent when children wearing orange-and-yellow outfits stand inside it and flicker their arms.

Ilya Burov plays a cat that befriends Cinderella, then becomes something else (we won’t tell you what). Christine Blanck plays a remarkably torso-twisting, back-bending Fairy Godmother, who clearly possesses unusual powers, at least in movement, and attire: a three-tiered dress that illuminates.

A group of kids wearing black-and-white outfits arrange themselves in a circle and shift their arms, artistically conveying the movements of a clock.

The first act develops slowly, with its memorable aspects coming at its close.

The second act features the most colorful choreography. The scene opens with a giant, 4-foot diameter black rubber ball. Get it? They’re at a ball.

Finally, we meet the prince, played by Mindaugus Bauzys, who’s a soloist with Boston Ballet and filled in on short notice for Gleb Lyamenkoff, who was supposed to play the part but suffered an injury a week earlier. Bauzys, who’s the husband of Putrius, is graceful and dignified, even when doing what might appear to be ridiculous dance movements, such as approaching the audience while hopping side to side like a slalom skier.

This is what makes watching a Plotnikov piece so interesting; you have no idea what moves will be made next.

How many times have you seen a Cinderella with nine dancers hopping in unison, then slapping their thighs in unison, then hopping in unison while bouncing very big balls?

Sometimes Plotnikov’s choreography elicits a laugh, at other times a gasp.

Big clear spheres floating like gigantic soap bubbles above the stage can do that. And so can Cinderella’s dress going from drab to fab and back again.

She has fled the ball and the Prince is in pursuit. Initially, he looks for the right woman in the wrong places, meeting a trio of women in black leather jackets and hot pants.

In this act, the big cones that once served a function in a fireplace become trumpets. And the Prince briefly becomes a pondering Groucho Marx, leaning forward, hand to chin, striding exaggeratedly. Finally, after sailing in an imaginary boat and riding on an imaginary horse, the Prince finds Cinderella.

And, of course they dance, a couple of times. The first one is romantic, with Guerrero and Bauzys smoothly partnering. The second one is mildly comical, where extended legs are bent, and where the Prince pirouettes with Cinderella’s assistance.

Cinderella will be performed tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. in Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence. Tickets are $17 to $62. There’s a pre-performance chat with company members 45 minutes before each show. For tickets, visit www.tickets.com, or call (401) 272-4862. For more information, visit www.festivalballet.com or call (401) 353-1129.

brourke@projo.com