09.12.2020
The centrepiece of our winter season
The Nutcracker continues to enjoy a special place in our winter season: after all, it wouldn’t be New Year without a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. The Nutcracker is all about hopeful dreams, kindness, and victory over the forces of evil, and encapsulates audiences’ hopes for a brighter future in the coming year.
Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato has moved the setting of the famous fairy tale to early twentieth-century St. Petersburg. When the curtain rises, the audience find themselves in the middle of the Christmas festivities in a wealthy, hospitable home. On stage is a decorated Christmas tree, and through the frame of a huge window, we look out onto the snow-covered city. Children are running around with balls and toys, and adults are exchanging Christmas greetings. The days gone by appear not as a pale nostalgic shadow, but in the fullness of their true colours. «In The Nutcracker, the dances come from the heart, for their own sake, prompted by a rush of feeling,» said the choreographer about his production, created in collaboration with set designer Jerome Kaplan. The choice of St. Petersburg as the setting for the ballet serves as a reminder that it was in this city that the most popular ballet of all time was first performed.
Realistic sets prepare the audience for a series of enchanting transformations. The horde of mice that Masha clashes with in her dreams resemble the first aviators in their furry helmets. The Nutcracker doll grows in the arms of its saviour and transforms with breathtaking speed into a handsome prince. In the second act, the heroes travel to a fairy-tale land inhabited by bizarre characters. The theatrical divertissement is perfectly pitched: for all its marvellous expressivity, it does not obscure the main narrative thread. A boundless night sky serves as the main set. The stars in the winter sky seem especially distant and unattainable — but now and then, some fall onto the stage.
Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato has moved the setting of the famous fairy tale to early twentieth-century St. Petersburg. When the curtain rises, the audience find themselves in the middle of the Christmas festivities in a wealthy, hospitable home. On stage is a decorated Christmas tree, and through the frame of a huge window, we look out onto the snow-covered city. Children are running around with balls and toys, and adults are exchanging Christmas greetings. The days gone by appear not as a pale nostalgic shadow, but in the fullness of their true colours. «In The Nutcracker, the dances come from the heart, for their own sake, prompted by a rush of feeling,» said the choreographer about his production, created in collaboration with set designer Jerome Kaplan. The choice of St. Petersburg as the setting for the ballet serves as a reminder that it was in this city that the most popular ballet of all time was first performed.
Realistic sets prepare the audience for a series of enchanting transformations. The horde of mice that Masha clashes with in her dreams resemble the first aviators in their furry helmets. The Nutcracker doll grows in the arms of its saviour and transforms with breathtaking speed into a handsome prince. In the second act, the heroes travel to a fairy-tale land inhabited by bizarre characters. The theatrical divertissement is perfectly pitched: for all its marvellous expressivity, it does not obscure the main narrative thread. A boundless night sky serves as the main set. The stars in the winter sky seem especially distant and unattainable — but now and then, some fall onto the stage.
