The Nutcracker, in New York City (NYC), has been the province of many companies but not the American Ballet Theater (ABT) in recent years. They have just done a brilliant new production which they are hoping will become the backbone of every season, for the Nutcracker pulls many a company out of financial disaster each year. It is without doubt the most popular ballet in America.
ABT is a stellar company and Alexei Ratmansky, the Russian-trained choreagrapher, and his team have done a marvelous interpretation from the opening scene with the party preparations in the kitchen taken over by the rats to the wonderful set pieces. This ballet is remarkable for its use of child dancers, for its Biedermeier inspired sets and costumes, for its humor, for its very clever staging of the dances. The evening flies by. I am a twitchy audience member and usually checking my watch, but this eveining, when the intermission came, I thought, "Already?"
At some level, Nutcracker seems to be a metaphor for puberty as the child dancers become adults, as the children's friendship becomes "love'--in this version the male dancer gives his partner a ring, as the dream of childhood becomes the morning after of awakening with the toy nutcracker.
This is a fresh and different production which also holds closely to tradition.
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