Glass Slipper Sister

If Cinderella had known what her future held, she might have just stayed indoors with her wicked stepfamily. Not that she wouldn't have had fun in the Khadra International Dance Theater's version of her story, Appalachian Cinderella. Instead of waltzing across a glittering palace in a sweeping train, this Cinderella finds herself swilling moonshine and cutting the rug with hog farmers at an Appalachian barn dance, circa the Roaring '20s. Khadra, whose repertoire spans folk styles from Eastern Europe to South America, revives the piece in a program featuring a folk collage with Gypsy accents and the malombo, a percussive Argentine cowboy dance. The Khadra Orchestra accompanies the dancers live; the show opens at 8 p.m. Thursday (and runs through Saturday) at ODC Theater, 3153 17th St. (at Shotwell), S.F. Admission is $12.50-20; call 863-9834.

Cindy's fate is a little grimmer in Dance Brigade's Cinderella, a Tale of Survival: Her prince comes, all right, but he's abusive, and the story opens in a battered women's shelter in which Cinderella has taken refuge from the domestic violence of her marriage and childhood. Politicizing fairy tales is nothing new to the Oakland-based company, whose Christmas standard The Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie turned The Nutcracker's epic battle into a fight between South African freedom fighters and the CIA. But in fairness, director Krissy Keefer invests her dances with a sense of humor, sending in trapeze-borne fairy godmothers to save the day. The show opens at 8 p.m. Friday (and runs through Sunday) at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida (at 17th Street), S.F. Admission is $15.50-17.50; call 621-7797. (H.W.)