Kansas City Ballet's Renovated 'Nutcracker' at the Kennedy Center

The Nutcracker (Act I, Kingdom of the Snow), Kansas City Ballet (photo by Brett Pruitt and East Market Studios)
Washington is possibly the only city in the world that sees a different production of The Nutcracker almost every year. Most companies, including our own Washington Ballet, tend to stick by their Nutcracker choreography year to year, trusting in the devotion of their audience to the familiar over the new. The Kennedy Center continued its tradition of hosting a visiting ballet company for a Thanksgiving weekend of Nutcracker performances, with the refurbished choreography inaugurated in 2015 at Kansas City Ballet.

Devon Carney created this version shortly after his appointment as the company's artistic director, and it goes for maximum laughs and enchantment. Drosselmeier becomes a presiding demiurge in this version, which opens with a new scene in the inventor's workshop. Guest character artist Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye's pratfalls and magic tricks soften the character's potential menace. With the help of flying effects, provided ably by Flying by Foy, he soared into the air, guiding the floating balloon that carried Clara (a sweet Maggie Crist) and the Nutcracker Prince to the Land of the Sweets.

Other Reviews: Robert Trussel, Kansas City Ballet’s reimagined ‘Nutcracker’ is elegant, fun and a bit chaotic (Kansas City Star, December 6, 2015) C. J. Janovy, Kansas City Ballet Takes Its 'Nutcracker' To The Kennedy Center In Washington, D.C. (KCUR, November 22, 2017)

Jokes outweigh sentiment at every turn, including the antics of Tempe Ostergren's Grandfather, animated by Drosselmeier's magic in the Großvater Tanz. Child dancers fill nearly every scene, adorable but reaching a critical mass of cuteness perhaps too early into the evening. The rats enter with disco moves, and baby mice shake their tails; pawing reindeer pull the sleigh of the snow queen, and tiny lambs obediently follow the shepherdesses in the entrée of the Mirlitons, again shaking their rear ends to get a laugh. The children, over a hundred of them, are all from the Washington area, trained specifically for these performances by Kimberly Cowen and Racheal Nye.

It is a choreography for short attention spans, as the pacing can be hectic. The only place that the action expanded slightly, allowing room for a reflective dance tableau, was not coincidentally the best part of the evening, the Kingdom of the Snow. The candy-sweet, rainbow-varied production (sets by Alain Vaës, costumes by Holly Hynes) became a more attractive crystalline blue and silver. The unified corps of twelve women, led by the graceful lead pairing of Danielle Bausinger and James Kirby Rogers, filled the smaller stage space created by the more detailed set, to some of the score's most charming music, featuring the piped-in voices of the Arlington Children's Chorus.

As usual the choreography bogs down in the saccharine variations of the second act, as some of the toys stolen by the mice at the end of the first act returned in the Land of the Sweets. Highlights included the Arabian dancer of Molly Wagner, lithe and flung through the air by her two partners, and the pert Rose of Taryn Mejia in the Waltz of the Flowers. The Sugar Plum Fairy (striking Amaya Rodriguez) and her Cavalier (Lamin Pereira dos Santos) had the most classical set of dances, a momentary concession to ballet tradition in this mostly pantomimed affair.

Among Nutcracker performances in the Washington area, this is the one to see, because the music is performed live and complete, that is, with the part for children's chorus and with some often-cut music restored. Ramona Pansegrau, who conducts the Kansas City Symphony for the company's home performances, led a mildly chaotic rendition from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. Sections of the orchestra sometimes did not line up with each other, apparently confused by some sudden shifts of tempo, but these minor drawbacks should even out as the run continues.

The Nutcracker runs through November 26 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Ballet West's Gingerbread Nutcracker

Artists of Ballet West in Willam Christensen's The Nutcracker (photo by Luke Isley)
Somehow the timing did not work out for me to take Miss Ionarts to see a production of The Nutcracker last year. So we were glad to see that the visiting production hosted by the Kennedy Center was scheduled for this week, when we are in town, and that it was Utah's Ballet West returning with the same production it presented in the Opera House in 2012. Willam F. Christensen was the first choreographer to present a complete production of this ballet in the United States, when he created this production for San Francisco Ballet in 1944. Lovingly restored by Ballet West's artistic director Adam Sklute, it is steeped in nostalgia, which might strike you differently depending on your mood. Two years ago, it made me all gooey and sentimental, but the second time around, on Wednesday night, it might have been nice to have a little vinegar to cut through all the sugar.

The pantomime parts were fun, including a host of adorable local children, and the real dancing was generally fine, solid and traditional in line. The snow pairing of Christiana Bennett and Beau Pearson was graceful in a classic way, matched by the energetic corp of snowflakes. Rising dancer Beskanne Sisk, currently billed as a soloist, had a star turn as the Sugar Plum Fairy, although there was a scary moment in the pas de deux when her partner, Christopher Ruud, seemed to have a leg buckle slightly during a lift, happily recovering without anyone getting hurt. Among the dancers of the divertissment, another rising soloist, Sayaka Ohtaki, was a pert dynamo as the lead Mirliton.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Ballet West ‘Nutcracker’ at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, December 11) Thomas Burr, Ballet West awes Kennedy Center crowd with Nutcracker (Salt Lake Tribune, December 11) Heather Hayes, Ballet West's 'Nutcracker' bursts with holiday cheer (Deseret News, December 8) Kathy Adams, New sparks keep Ballet West’s ‘Nutcracker’ special (Salt Lake Tribune, December 8)

Some details of the original show have obviously been updated, like the opening scenes, which use video projections to show city backdrops amid falling snow. There are a few bright and loud explosions, for the appearance of the dancer-nutcracker and also fired from the toy soldiers' cannon in the battle against the mice. These bits of theatrical glitz stand out in what is mostly an old-fashioned, low-tech sort of production. Christensen hewed close to Tchaikovsky's score, in which the composer carefully matched music to stage action. For example, Adrian Fry's slightly menacing Drosselmeyer even climbs into the grandfather clock, sticking his head through the clock's face to signal the start of Clara's dream sequence. Drosselmeyer's little nephew, with matching purple top hat, shadows him throughout the ballet, softening his uncle's menacing character.

The most magical moment of the score is the transition into the dream world, a long crescendo over a rather simple set of harmonic progressions (seventh chords resolving to minor triads) that bursts into B-flat major on its way to A major, the latter with that mysterious mediant shift to F major and back. Drosselmeyer presides over it in this version, swirling about in a mostly empty and semi-darkened stage after the Grossvater Tanz marks the end of the Christmas party. Drosselmeyer's hands sweep away the furniture and command the Christmas tree and presents to grow in size. As if in her dream, Clara is threatened by things she seems to remember uneasily from the party: the mechanical dancing bear, her bratty brother and his trumpet-blowing posse, even her kindly godfather.

This production continues through December 14, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Ballet West's 'Nutcracker'

Utah's Ballet West was invited to the Kennedy Center Opera House this year in the revolving series of December performances of The Nutcracker, and it was an easy choice for our December picks. After a musically disappointing return visit to the Washington Ballet's version of this holiday favorite this weekend, Miss Ionarts and I had high hopes for the Ballet West production, especially since Alastair Macaulay had written so glowingly of it in the New York Times a couple years ago. It turned out to be the version of The Nutcracker we have enjoyed the most.

With original choreography by Willam F. Christensen (created initially when he was at San Francisco Ballet), this version is billed as the oldest complete Nutcracker production in the United States. It is refreshingly traditional, hewing close to the details of Tchaikovsky's magical score: when the trumpets sound during the Christmas party scene, Fritz and the boys are running around blowing noisily on their toy trumpets (also, the overture is not given any choreography, a nice touch). The pretty storybook sets (designed by Ariel Baliff) are colorful, with a video effect of blowing snow added to the opening scenes, and a Dr. Seuss-bright Land of the Sweets in the second act, half Arabian harem and half Oh, the Places You'll Go!. The company trained a large cast of local children for these performances, and they all charmed, especially the tumbling polichinelles in the Mère Gigogne entrée of the divertissement. The costumes (David Heuvel) were handsome and just slightly old-fashioned.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Ballet West’s ‘Nutcracker’: One to truly enjoy (Washington Post, December 6) Heather Brady, Salt Lake City to Washington: America's oldest 'Nutcracker' pivots east (WTOP, December 5) Kathy Adams, Ballet West heads for Kennedy Center with enlivened Nutcracker (Salt Lake Tribune, December 1) Ellen Fagg Weist, Spin, Sugarplum, spin: It’s ‘Nutcracker’ season (Salt Lake Tribune, November 26)

Ballet West's current artistic director, Adam Sklute, reportedly restored some of Christensen's ideas to the choreography, which had been lost in the intervening years, embracing this version's retro vision, which packs a nostalgia-filled punch. The Nutcracker is about a little girl dreaming of growing up. For a father of a young daughter, who is taller with each year's new Nutcracker I take her to, it can be daunting and emotionally overpowering. Christensen takes the little girl's dreams quite seriously -- the terrors and the dreams of love, with a grown-up Prince (Owen Gaj). As Clara sleeps fitfully on a couch in the dream scene, her mind seems to replay the thrills and disappointments of the Christmas party, as the teasing children, her creepy godfather, and the delightful but slightly scary dancing bear that is one of the automated dolls all reappear in her mind. No dream is more important than the dream of dancing: the other automated doll that Drosselmeyer brings to the Christmas party is a dancing ballerina. When she arrives in the Land of Sweets, Clara is clad in a ballet costume like the Sugar Plum Fairy's.

Terence Kern led the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra in a buoyant rendition of the score, slightly rough in patches but likely to improve by the end of the run. Something happened with the sound system at the start of the choral section of the snow scene, but the Lower School Singers from National Cathedral Schools sounded lovely when the sound was stabilized. All of the dancers were elegant and in good form, especially the Snow Queen of Haley Henderson Smith and her strong-armed Cavalier, Easton Smith -- a beautiful pairing. The lead pair, Christiana Bennett and Christopher Ruud, were a graceful Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier, with outstanding character dances from the Arabian Dancers (led by Jacqueline Straughan and Ronnie Underwood) and the quintet of acrobatic Russian Dancers (led by Christopher Sellars).

This performance will be repeated, with different casts, through December 9, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Washington Ballet 'Nutcracker'

Septime Webre's choreography of The Nutcracker, made for Washington Ballet and presented each December at the Warner Theater, will always be associated with good memories. Webre reimagined the famous story as taking place in Washington, with Clara receiving the present of a nutcracker from her eccentric godfather at a Christmas party in Georgetown, seeing the dance of the snowflakes with the monuments in the background, and the Land of Springtime, cherry blossoms and all, replacing the Land of Sweets. It was the first ballet that Miss Ionarts ever saw, but when I asked her what she remembered about it earlier this fall, she recalled very little. So we decided to make our first trip back to the Warner Theater to see what this Nutcracker was like now.

As we have reported over the past few years, since our first experience of this production, the Washington Ballet has stopped performing its Nutcracker with a live orchestra -- except for a small orchestra hired last season, which turned out to be an exception. This was quite unfortunate for the company, since it happened when Alastair Macaulay came through Washington on his Nutcracker Chronicles tour and the review was damning. Washington Post critic Sarah Kaufman, after soft-pedaling the orchestra issue in the last couple years, led with it in her review on Sunday. Who knows how bad press affects ticket sales, which it should, but the crowd on Saturday night seemed not as full as it should have been.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Lack of orchestra takes some of the magic out of Washington Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ (Washington Post, December 2)

We have suffered through a Nutcracker without live music before, and the effect was just as disappointing here. Without a live conductor and musicians, there is no elasticity to the coalescence of music and dance, and too much of the movement just felt rushed as dancers nervously made sure that they did not get behind the unfeeling metronome blasting from the speakers. So this is not a Nutcracker for purists or for most adults who have expectations about ballet from experience. That being said, the choreography is delightful in many ways, and Miss Ionarts was so charmed that she proclaimed it her favorite Nutcracker yet. Although Webre has stacked the stage with a critical mass of cute kids -- mice in pilgrim hats! snow angels! toadstools! butt-shaking bees! polka-dot polichinelles! -- the corps scenes and the pas de deux are far from child's play.

Washington Ballet's production of The Nutcracker continues through December 23, at the Warner Theater.

American Ballet Theater's 'Nutcracker'

Justin Souriau-Levine as Little Mouse in Alexei Ratmansky's The Nutcracker for American Ballet Theater (photo by Rosalie O'Connor)

One of the highlights of the year for Miss Ionarts is reviewing a new production of The Nutcracker. After taking in Septime Webre's Georgetown staging with the Washington Ballet, the sugar-sweet Balanchine version from the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the disappointing Moscow Ballet production, it was time to see Alexei Ratmansky's recently premiered production with American Ballet Theater, on tour at the Kennedy Center Opera House this week. It is an imaginative rethinking of the story, heavy on pantomime and charming vignettes, opening in the family kitchen where frantic preparations are under way for the Christmas party. Both the servants and the other residents of the house, an army of mice, are quite busy, the latter led by an adorable ragamuffin in a small mouse costume (on Thursday night, a boy with an appropriately musine name, Justin Souriau-Levine), who reappears throughout the ballet and effectively steals the show by his antics.

The central change to the story and characterization, akin to the recent adaptation from San Francisco Ballet, is to recast the Sugar Plum Fairy sequence for an adult "Princess" Clara and a grown Nutcracker prince. The older couple first appear moving in tandem with the younger pair and go on to act out the girl's dream of growing up and falling in love. Productions of this ballet tend to feel mainly aimed at either children or adults, and Ratmansky's seems to fall into the former category, emphasizing burlesque entertainment over more classical ballet sequences, seen in the addition of four male bees, for example, who buzz around the female corps in the Waltz of the Flowers. (Further illustrating the point, two of the company's dancers appeared on the satirical television show The Colbert Report on Wednesday night, sending up the ballet's pas de deux with the host prancing around in a suit jacket, tights, and prominent codpiece.) This is more shrewd calculation than anything else: for ABT, as for most companies, the slew of December Nutcracker performances is big business, as shown in a comprehensive article on the subject recently in the Wall Street Journal. This is a production that will charm children and adults, but the serious balletomane, hoping for more than a smattering of traditional choreography, may be disappointed. That group of people is not the sort a company depends on to fill the house in December, however, so this Nutcracker is likely to have a long and profitable run.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, American Ballet Theatre’s ‘The Nutcracker” at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, December 10)

Mice and children overrun much of the choreography, with a mob of gift-hungry kids ruling the Christmas party in Act I, well coordinated but still wild. The solo dances are inventively conceived, like a jumpy, pointy Harlequin and Colombine pair of spring-activated toys (Craig Salstein and Gemma Bond) and a brightly costumed Turkish soldier (Luis Ribagorda). The beginning of the dream sequence is strikingly surreal, as the Christmas tree grows and becomes large set pieces in the wing and Clara observes much of the battle from an enormous chair in skewed perspective (sets and costumes by Richard Hudson). The orchestra was perhaps the best part of this production, a generally refined performance led by Ormsby Wilkins, with only the battle scene sounding a little helter-skelter in terms of ensemble. The moment when the children's chorus enters, at a crucial point in the snow scene, is one of the most magical in the score: sadly, it is frequently omitted, but here it was sung with pleasing innocence by an unseen combination of singers from the Norwood Middle School Choir, the National Cathedral Schools Lower School Singers, and Pilgrim Lutheran Church Junior Choir.

The mysterious Drosselmeyer retains some of his menacing qualities here (danced by Victor Barbee), involved in the action throughout, including having to rescue Clara and her prince when the snow scene darkens into a blizzard, threatening hypothermia to the exposed children. Ratmansky gives away most of his ideas for the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy right at the beginning of the second act, when all of the solo dancers appear on stage as a group. Most of these "solos" are really small group numbers: an acrobatic pair of Chinese dancers (Sarah Lane and Daniil Simkin), a cocky sultan (Sascha Radetsky) and four concubines from his harem for the Arabian dance, a trio of bouncy Russian dancers. What should be the climax of the second act, the pas de deux for the grown Princess Clara and Nutcracker Prince (a fine Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes), is trivialized a bit by being linked to the charming child pair (Mikaela Kelly and Theodore Elliman), with too many cutesy and shy movements. At least here, in the Sugar Plum Fairy sequence, one hopes to have some classical ballet for adults, even in The Nutcracker.

The run of the American Ballet Theater's Nutcracker continues through Sunday, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

What to Hear (See) Next Season: Washington Ballet

See my interview with Septime Webre and a preview of the Washington Ballet's new season:

Washington Ballet to Revive “Gatsby,” Adds “ALICE (in Wonderland)” to Next Season (Washingtonian, July 27):

The last few years have not been easy for the Washington Ballet. A labor dispute with the dancers scuttled the company’s 2005 run of Nutcracker, the holiday-season cash cow of many ballet companies. According to Washington Post dance critic Sarah Kaufman, at the heart of the dispute were “thorny questions [about] how much control [artistic director Septime] Webre should have.” Then the economic crisis hit, and the orchestra that played for the company’s productions was dismissed because of financial constraints, in 2009. The use of recorded music instead of full orchestra became more or less permanent at the beginning of last season. Last week, Septime Webre spoke to Washingtonian about the company and what its plans are for next season, his 13th as artistic director.

Reports have put the annual budget of the Washington Ballet at around $8 million but shrinking over the last couple years. Webre confirms that it is still somewhere around that figure. “Ticket sales have been doing really well,” he says, “and fundraising has stayed strong, from individuals particularly and special events. The biggest challenge, the only major challenge, I would say, has been the loss of government funding. We had been receiving support from the city of Washington, about $1 million a year. Two summers ago, that was cut to zero, in the budget balancing process, making a huge loss from which we had to recover.” The budget battle being fought right now at the federal level may imperil the company’s funding, too, as support to the arts could be cut there. [Continue reading]

Moscow Ballet's "Great" Russian Nutcracker

This should already be clear, but in case it is not: true ballet requires live music. The recession continues to threaten the very existence of ballet companies, and using recorded music has become a common economic survival strategy. Thus it was no surprise to hear recorded music, and pretty badly played and recorded music at that, accompanying the performance of the Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker, last Wednesday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. The Web page linked in the previous sentence makes no mention of the use of recorded music, although Strathmore is not a theater and does not have an orchestra pit. Large black curtains were hung to cover the chorister seating and a hanging proscenium was in place to create the sense of a stage. There was no place for an orchestra, with large speakers pumping out canned music on either side of the "stage" instead.

Sarah Kaufman chose not to review this production in the Washington Post, writing instead about the ballet horror film Black Swan, and she really buried the lede in this regard in her review of the Washington Ballet Nutcracker. The 2008 run of that production, reviewed in these pages, was the last for which the company hired an orchestra to play the score during the performance of the holiday favorite. Kaufman, whom many including myself think is a prodigiously talented writer, praised many elements of the production but chose to leave the criticism of the canned music to the final paragraph. This was a rather kind gesture toward the company, which makes no mention anywhere on the Nutcracker page of its Web site about the music being played from a recording. It is very likely that many people, who did not read to the end of Kaufman's review, will show up at the Warner Theater expecting to hear a live orchestra.

As they enter the theater this month, they may hear members of the orchestra that used to play for the Washington Ballet's Nutcracker, playing Christmas carols outside the Warner Theater to protest the company's use of recorded music. (There was a lengthy piece on the story this week in the Washington City Paper.) It's going to be a long, cold winter for freelance orchestral musicians: Matthew Guerrieri beat me to the punchline by noting that Joseph Horowitz was telling orchestral musicians they should expect to supplement their income with more freelance work just as Daniel Wakin was reporting that such freelance work was all too rapidly disappearing.

Alastair Macaulay asked the question in the New York Times: why is The Nutcracker so popular in the United States? Even to the point that people will flock to December productions of the ballet even without an orchestra? To give a glimpse of the work's popularity, Macaulay wrote a pile of reviews of productions he saw all across the United States (including the Moscow Ballet). Even beyond the use of recorded music, the Moscow Ballet's touring production is stripped down to its bare essentials, to maximize profits in a large number of brief runs across the United States (from Minneapolis to Youngstown and beyond). The company flies in a few soloists, a core professional cast that is augmented with a gaggle of local kids for many of the roles. (Most of the audience seated around us oohed and ahhed as they saw their family members take the stage.) The feature numbers, Arabian and Chinese dancers and so forth, all had smiling kids running around and mugging shamelessly (or adorably, depending on your perspective) from the edge of the stage, as well as big strolling animals that played for gags in the background. This part of a rather sugary choreography grated on me after a while, but the kids in the audience (including Miss Ionarts, out for her third Nutcracker) loved every minute of it.

The production, tweaked by multiple directors over the years, transforms the story in unusual ways: Masha (the Russian name given here for the character of Clara or Maria) follows the Nutcracker, transformed by her uncle Drosselmeyer into a prince, into the Snow Forest, where they meet the Russian Ice Father and Snow Princess, and beyond into a Land of Peace and Harmony. Both the Mouse King and Drosselmeyer, who appears as a sort of guiding hand throughout the work (danced by the Ballet Master, Andrei Litvinov), return in the second half. Pairs of dancers present national dances, with the music for Mother Gigogne and the Polichinelles used instead for a reprise of all of them. Masha and the Prince take the music for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her consort, with a handsome pair of principal dancers, Ekaterina Bortyakova and Akzhol Mussakhanov, who are making their U.S. debut on this tour, heading up the cast. Much of the choreography for the small corps (only eight dancers) seemed four-square and somewhat unimaginative, while the feature dances veered dangerously toward feats of strength more appropriate for circus acrobats (the Arabian pair, Viktoria Kiriat and Titus Popescu, were particularly astounding). The story, by E. T. A. Hoffman, is at some level about a little girl dreaming of big girl things -- facing dangers alone, drinking adult drinks, falling in love -- and just once a more disturbing production that broached that serious side of the work would be welcome. What sort of Nutcracker would Calixto Bieito dream up?

SVILUPPO:
Sally Michael Keyes, the Director of Public Relations for the Moscow Ballet, wrote the following letter to the editor, which we excerpt here for your further information about the production under review:

The company travels with nine separate, hand-painted backdrops, more than any production that I am familiar with; there are over 200 hundred costumes, most of which are hand-sewn with beads, ribbons, and more, and some of which are designed by international costumer Olga Dumova; and we also travel with extensive props including a hand-made puppet set and puppets in Act I, toys for all the guests, “horse dolls” that the party guests play in, a Maypole, a hand-designed and -made cannon modeled after those found in the gardens of St. Petersburg, which shoots roses and more in Act II.

The organization flies in over 70 dancers each year from Russia. You can imagine the intensity of getting visas and paperwork in order for that number of dancers, never mind the cost. The dancers audition for the Ballet Master in Russia and he determines who makes the cut for the tour. Half of the group travel on the West Coast Tour and the other half travel on the East Coast Tour. They include the Ballet Master for each tour, principals, soloists, and corps, which is at least 35 professional, Russian-trained dancers on stage for each performance. Our “corps” is not 8 but 30 dancers and in relation to almost every other touring ballet performance that I know of, that is not small.

To clarify my point about the corps de ballet, if it is not clear in the review, there were eight dancers who performed as a group (for example, as the snowflakes and flowers), not including the soloists.

Tooth-Rotting Children's 'Nutcracker'

Waltz of the Snowflakes, Nutcracker, Pennsylvania Ballet (photo by Paul Kolnik)

In addition to Septime Webre's Washington-specific Nutcracker for Washington Ballet, which Miss Ionarts and I attended last year, the Kennedy Center usually hosts a visiting company that mounts Tchaikovsky's evergreen Christmas-themed ballet. After the Joffrey Ballet's visit last December, it was the Pennsylvania Ballet's turn, giving a series of performances this week of George Balanchine's classic choreography (the one created for New York City Ballet and supposedly performed in Washington for the first time in this production) in the Kennedy Center Opera House. With so much of the ballet performed by children -- talented, well-coached child dancers, but still -- it is probably not a Nutcracker for a serious dance enthusiast, but Nutcracker is not really about serious dance for most people in the audience. Judging by the reaction of Miss Ionarts, who is my constant companion for this sort of event, at last night's performance it is an excellent option for a child viewer.

The production has broad, colorful set backdrops and numerous special effects, including a couch and bed that glide about by themselves, a flying ship, and a little moving toe plate on which the Sugar Plum Fairy floats en pointe. Herr Drosselmaier (Maximilien Baud) is a more menacing figure than in other versions, stealing back into the house while Marie (Clara) is asleep. One factor that shifts this staging toward the children is the decision to cast the Prince (Nutcracker) as a child, the poised and sunny Peter Weil, who appears first as Drosselmeier's nephew at the party, returning later in Marie's dream. This approach had its physical limitations especially in the battle with the Mouse King (Nicolas Sipes) and his forces. The corps de ballet shone strongest in its lovely, unified women as the Snowflakes (Act I) and the Flowers (Act II), with strong solo performances from the Sugar Plum Fairy of Arantxa Ochoa, Meredith Reffner's curving, long-legged Coffee (the Arabian dancer -- the Chinese dancers' scene is called Tea), and the Mirlitons of Abigail Mentzer and colleagues (called the Marzipan Shepherdesses).

Other Articles: Sarah Kaufman, With this 'Nutcracker,' the magic is in the music (Washington Post, November 26) Jean Battey Lewis, 'Nutcracker's' zestful magic sparks season (Washington Times, November 26) Ellen Dunkel, Notching several firsts in the capital (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 27)

Where this production definitely trumped the Washington Ballet, at least as heard last year, was in the musical performance, with many details of Tchaikovsky's luminous and complex score sparkling in their best light. This was especially true of the children's chorus in the Waltz of the Snowflakes, which is omitted in some versions (including several I have witnessed) -- but there it is in on the page, a two-part chorus of trebles voices, indicated by Tchaikovsky to be hidden if sung by women or on stage by children (the Norwood Middle School Choir was piped in and added some lovely sounds). Balanchine added a scene in the first act, after the guests leave the house when we see Marie, fallen asleep on a couch, covered in a blanket by her mother. The music played at this point is an entr'acte composed originally by Tchaikovsky for the second act of Sleeping Beauty, with an extended violin solo, whose complicated passages were played admirably on Friday night. Miss Ionarts and I were also surprised to see the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy almost at the beginning of the second act, another example of Balanchine's reordering of the ballet.

Three performances of Pennsylvania Ballet's production of Balanchine's Nutcracker remain at the Kennedy Center Opera House, today at 1:30 and 7:30 pm and tomorrow at 1:30 pm.

Christmas Addendum: San Francisco Nutcracker

Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, H. Tomasson, San Francisco Ballet (released on November 18, 2008) Opus Arte DVD OA 1002 D

After attending her first Nutcracker, Miss Ionarts has been obsessive about that ballet, meaning that we have been watching this recently arrived DVD of San Francisco Ballet's new production of this Christmas chestnut (also broadcast last month on PBS). Unlike the Metropolitan Opera Hansel and Gretel DVD reviewed yesterday, this is a very kid-friendly version of a beloved work that is, at the same time, not bogged down (too much) in the same old traditional ideas. Helgi Tomasson's choreography, premiered in 2004, shifts the action to San Francisco at the time of the 1915 World's Fair. After the devastating earthquake of 1906, the city celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, in a moment of quintessentially American optimism, with a lavish fair to represent the city's hope of becoming a center of commerce because of the new possibilities in Atlantic-Pacific trade.

Michael Yeargan's sets place the opening scene on a fog-filled San Francisco street of Painted Ladies, the brightly colored Victorian houses for which the city is famous. A fairly traditional opening to the first act, including the Harlequin and Colombine toys presented by Drosselmeyer, has a few interesting changes. The soldier's dance is recast as a dance for the Nutcracker, who appears in his large form early. The transformation into Clara's dream is exciting, as the Christmas tree grows upward and huge forms of the small presents by the tree appear (the fireplace and toy cabinet, too), showing Clara shrinking down to the size of the mice.

The real ingenuity of the production is in the second act, where Clara and the Prince, after passing through the world of snow, arrive at the Sugar Plum Fairy's realm, not of sweets, but transformed versions of the national pavilions at the World's Fair grounds. For the Arabian dance a genie appears from Aladdin's lamp, there is an articulated New Year's dragon for the Chinese dance, three Russian dancers pop out of Fabergé eggs, and the three ribbon dancers for the Mirlitons seem like French can-can dancers. Miss Ionarts especially liked Mère Gigogne and the polichinelles, who were clowns that come out from a huge circus tent mother, with a very cute dancing bear. Tomasson made the most striking change by having the Grand Pas de Deux at the end be danced not by the Sugar Plum Fairy, but by Clara (and the Nutcracker Prince, instead of the Cavalier), whom we see transformed from a little girl (Elizabeth Powell) into a real ballerina (Maria Kochetkova). For Miss Ionarts and surely many other little girls watching this production, that is a dream come true.

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Washington Ballet "Nutcracker"

Miss Ionarts wants to be a ballerina, so it seemed a good time to take her to see her first performance of Tchaikovsky's evergreen Christmas ballet The Nutcracker. Given the choice this weekend between the more traditional Victorian extravaganza version offered by the Joffrey Ballet at the Kennedy Center and the Washington Ballet's revival of Septime Webre's reimagining of The Nutcracker at the Warner Theater, we chose the latter for our Saturday night outing. Not one to be cowed by the elitist associations of fancy dress for this sort of cultural event, as you can see in the image at left, Miss Ionarts chose to attend in fur coat and tiara.

Septime Webre, artistic director of the Washington Ballet, gave the company a huge hit by re-envisioning the story, a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann (Nussknacker und Mausekönig) revised by Alexandre Dumas père as L'histoire d'un casse-noisette, in Washington, D.C. Many other choreographers have updated the story, but Webre's staging takes the cake, because of the extravagantly colorful and dynamic sets (designed by Peter Horne) and Washington-specific costumes (Judanna Lynn) and other details. As set in Washington in 1882, Clara's family lives in a well-appointed mansion in Georgetown, and their Christmas Eve party is attended by Frederick Douglass and other guests. Drosselmeyer's spring-activated toys become the pair of John Paul Jones and Miss Liberty (instead of Harlequin and Colombine), followed by a rather menacing Hopi kachina doll (instead of the soldier).

Elizabeth Gaither and Jared Nelson were the Snow Queen and King in the Washington Ballet's The Nutcracker (photo by Carol Pratt)

When Clara falls asleep by the Christmas tree, she sees rats, of course, instead of mice, and the Rat King looks like King George III (and Betsy Ross and Benjamin Franklin make a cameo appearance). The king and his redcoats battle the Nutcracker, who looks like George Washington, and toy soldiers as the American revolutionary army. Instead of the Land of Sweets in Act II, Clara and her prince are transported to the Land of Springtime, with cherry blossoms at peak by the Tidal Basin, coloring the sky pink. The Springtime Sugar Plum Fairy is attended by butterflies, mushrooms, bees, and charming animals with funny head masks. She entertains Clara and her prince with Spanish and Chinese dancers, as well as a sultry pair of Anacostia Indians (for the Arab dance), an acrobatic frontiersman (the legendary Davy Crockett, for the Russian dance), bright red cardinals and a tom cat (for the Mirlitons), Mother Barnum and circus clowns (for Mère Gigogne and the polichinelles), and cherry blossoms for the flowers. The only detail he missed was to have worried Washingtonians buying up milk, bread, and toilet paper in the snow scene.

It is visually quite different than the more traditional Nutcracker, like that of the Joffrey Ballet, but it is no less lavish or full of movement and interest. The cast is enormous, with much of the action being carried by children from the Washington School of Ballet drawn from around the area. Four lucky and hard-working young women were cast as Clara in the production, and you may remember that last year's production featured the first appearance of a little girl whose father was a Marine lieutenant colonel in Iraq, for whom the opening night performance was recorded for the Pentagon to broadcast to U.S. troops abroad, so that her dad could watch it. In fact, this Nutcracker became a victim of its own popularity two years ago, when the dancers decided to strike in December 2005, with the intention of scuttling the company's most profitable production. It certainly worked, and a deal was struck.

Dance of the Snowflakes in Washington Ballet's The Nutcracker (photo by Carol Pratt)

For all of my jaded cynicism about the endless performances of these holiday favorites, it is a different experience altogether to take a child to one of these chestnuts, someone is seeing it all for the first time. As with Master Ionarts last year at Washington National Opera's Hansel and Gretel, Miss Ionarts was transfixed in an apoplexy of rapture throughout this two-hour performance. My fears that she might get cranky or fall asleep were totally unfounded, because she sat up and took in every detail. The most memorable parts of the production, of course, are those danced by the members of the company, and as an aspiring dancer, she was most taken by the vision of real ballerinas more than the children: the Sugar Plum Fairy of Rui Huang, the graceful snowflakes, the pert cardinals, and the elegant cherry blossoms, even the athletic leaps of Jonathan Jordan's frontiersman. The only unpolished part was in some of the sounds coming from the orchestra pit: although associate conductor Emil de Cou had a capable hand at the podium, the violins were especially ununified, at times shockingly so. Hopefully, by the end of the run, some of those players will have actually learned their parts. One thing is clear: you can likely expect many more reviews of ballet in these pages in the future.

The Washington Ballet's production of The Nutcracker continues at the Warner Theater through December 28.