Category: Ballet

Sunday December 26, 2010 at 5:30 PM – Ever since he photographed Veronika Part when she was dancing for Avi Scher, Kokyat has been smitten with the ballerina. He had a second opportunity to photograph her when she repeated her role in Avi’s ballet TOUCH. He and I went to see her in ABT’s SWAN LAKE and he was really excited at the prospect of seeing her in Alexei Ratmansky’s new version of THE NUTCRACKER. Kokyat’s image of the ballerina, above.

I have always liked ABT’s ‘Baryshnikov’ NUTCRACKER though I must say I think the filmed version falls short of experiencing it in the theatre. I especially like what Baryshnikov did with some of the divertissement pieces, most notably Spanish (danced in this filmed clip by Jolinda Menendez and Clark Tippett) and Marzipan (Aurea Hammerli and Warren Connover in the filmed excerpt).   I also have a soft spot for the way Baryshinikov made the pas de deux a ‘psychological’ pas de trois for Clara, the Prince and Drosselmeyer. I once saw three consecutive performances of the Baryshnikov production on a single weekend: my Claras were Leslie Browne, Mariana Tcherkassky and Natalia Markarova. Much as I admire Gelsey Kirkland in the film, each of these ballerinas was quite wonderful in the role.

Aside from the Balanchine NUTCRACKER which I have seen close to a hundred times (not counting the filmed version), the Baryshnikov setting is the only version of this ballet I’m really familiar with. But it’s been years since it was presented ‘live’ and now ABT have put on a new version at BAM and so we braved the snowy trek to Brooklyn and the restless audience full of kids to see what Ratmansky has devised.

The Ratmansky NUTCRACKER opens in the Stahlbaum kitchen. Mice (beautifully costumed in in grey tailcoats) play a big role in this production, especially one little mouse who quickly became tiresome. The kitchen scene was an unnecessary addition since it had nothing to do with anything.

One immediate realization about this production is how much better the NYCB orchestra play this score than their ABT counterparts. Of course, the NYCB musicians have had much more experience playing it. (The interpolated violin intermezzo which links the two scenes of Act I of the Balanchine is not done at ABT).

The party scene is played in a large, flat-tourquoise room. The children in this scene are too old to still be enchanted by Christmas, so they are spoiled and snotty instead. There’s hardly any dancing aside from the Harlequin/Columbine duo and a couple known as The Recruit and the Canteen Keeper. These mechanical dolls appear from large wrapped Xmas boxes just as the dolls in Balanchine’s version do. But their choreography isn’t nearly as lovely. They also reappear randomly later in the production.

There is no sense of mystery or magic about Ratmansky’s Drosselmeyer who looks – in his plaid pants and spangled cloak-liner – like a 19th century dandy/pimp. Isaac Stappas, handsome as ever, did what he could with the role.

Rehearsal photo: Ratmansky, Gomes, Part.

The Battle of the Mice is a rather helter-skelter affair. Then we’re off to the Snow scene where Clara and her boy-prince encounter their older selves in the persons of Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes. The younger and older couple have a sort of parallel pas de deux; there’s lots of hugging and excitement over being with someone you love but the choreography for Part & Gomes seems hellbent on making them look their worst for the most part. You have two of the greatest dancers in the world at your disposal and this is all you could think of to do? Meanwhile the snowflakes are doing some dancing but it isn’t cohesive; in fact it’s rather random….and they sometimes lay down on the floor. Their petite leaps in place make lots of toe-shoe racket on the stage, causing me to yearn for Balanchine’s swift, magical and winter-quiet snowflakes. Where are Mary Sell and Sarah Villwock when you need them? Well, anyway, all the ABT snowflakes appear to die at the end of the scene. Drosselmeyer pushes on a large sleigh but its runners have not been oiled and there’s a loud screeching sound. He manages to run over the tutu of one of the recumbent snowflakes before her gets Clara and her boy-prince into the sleigh to head for Sugar Plum Land. 

Ratmansky’s divertissement ‘national dances’ lack the charm of the Balanchine versions – the music is charming, so the choreography should be also. Aside from a conventional and pleasing Spanish dance for three couples, most of the choreography in ABT’s Act II went in for cuteness and cleverness rather than vivacity or anything vaguely poetic.

Who knew, for example, that the Nutcracker has five sisters? Dressed in pink top hats, five excellent ABT ballerinas danced very nicely but the choreography just seemed so pointless (they had the Marzipan music). I could swear I saw Maria Riccetto among them though she was not listed.

In Arabian, all I could think was “Sascha Radetsky came back to ABT for this?”  The conductor chose a molasses-in-January tempo, making the already-long piece stretch out interminably. The handsome Sascha, in harem pants, bare-chested and beautifully tattooed, simply walked around the stage while four women teased, cajoled and scolded him. At the very end of the piece he did a very quick phrase of real dancing and then swept off.

Marian Butler and Joseph Gorak were fine in Chinese though they had more interesting things to do in the finale than in the set piece. Three men danced a slapstick Russian trepak; the dancers were replacing the announced trio and I am not sure I got the names right but they seemed to be Luis Ribagorda, Roman Zhurbin and Julio Bragado-Young.

Ever since Balanchine put a male dancer on stilts and created a drag Mother Ginger, several productions have done the same in this number. Ratmansky tries it again but what undermines his version is having the ‘polichinelles’ dressed as Red Hot Chili Peppers. Cuteness prevailed yet again and by this point things were getting pretty stale. (Baryshnikov’s pleasing solution to this set piece was to have it danced by four Jesters with tinkling bells sewn to their costumes).

The Waltz of the Flowers featured anonymously pretty choreography; there’s no Dewdrop but there are four male Bees who buzz around the bouquet of ballerinas. My heart bled for the four excellent danseurs who were forced to carry on with much coy prancing about. Baryshnikov’s version had also omitted the Dewdrop role, and he too used men in the Waltz but they were elegantly dressed cavaliers, not silly and superfluous bugs.

Part and Gomes danced splendidly in the grand pas de deux, given in standard performance order (adagio/male solo/female solo/coda) as opposed to Balanchine’s version which rearranges it, putting the Sugar Plum variation at the start of Act II. There were some exciting partnering feats in the duet but even here Ratmansky seemed to feel a need to be different just for the sake of being different; the choreography wasn’t memorable enough for me to recall specifics. At times, though, it seemed to me that the choreography was working against the natural grace of the dancers by making them do odd things.

As the finale draws to a close, Gomes asks Part to marry him. He places a ring on her finger while attendants place a veil on her head. They elope.

At the end, in a bizarre scene, Clara is seen in her bed with Gomes standing to one side and the boy-prince at the other. She awakes and goes first to one, then the other. Does she want them to get in bed with her? They recoil and withdraw. Clara settles down with her Nutcracker doll as the voyeuristic Drosselmeyer peeks in thru the window.

Curtain call photos by K. Click to enlarge.

There were lots of empty seats though it’s possible the weather was to blame for some of them, The production seems to have been built for touring; it looks nice enough at BAM but I think it would be really dwarfed at the Met.

My guideline for the success or failure of a ballet production is simple: is it something I want to see again or – failing that – would I be willing to see again despite misgivings just to see other dancers in the leading roles? This production fails on both counts. Kokyat liked some of it simply because it was so visually different from anything else. I kept wishing they’d simply refurbished the Baryshinikov.

My friend and fellow blogger Tonya Plank takes a different view of the production here; she saw a different cast and I believe she plans to see additional performances.

So many superb dancers in each roster rank: I wish ABT would make more of an effort to mount productions which are truly worthy of their talents. 

Thinking about current choreographers who might offer an interesting take on NUTCRACKER, the names Christopher Wheeldon, Edwaard Liang and Melissa Barak came to mind.