In the costume room at Los Angeles Ballet's Westside headquarters, co-artistic director Thordal Christensen is trying to explain what makes his company's "Nutcracker" different from every other "Nutcracker." Opening a huge Tupperware-like container, he extracts a mask of a snarling mouse. "All our mouse heads have different expressions, and some have really evil eyes," he says with pride.
According to Christensen, "going all out on the costumes" is a mark of the "The Nutcracker" as performed by L.A. Ballet. Yet the company is but one of innumerable North American ballet troupes that consider the Tchaikovsky classic both their bread and butter and a seasonal ritual akin to a Christmas ham or turkey. Meaning: Although that piece of meat had better be on the table every year, its preparation remains open to interpretation and, as a result, traditions develop and strong opinions form.
"You don't mess with the music or the story," Christensen says of Tchaikovsky's score and the original "Nutcracker" plot, based on the 19th century E.T.A. Hoffmann tale of a little girl at Christmastime whose gift of a nutcracker doll turns into a prince and transports her to an enchanted realm. "But every year, I think about ways to tweak it, how to give our production its own life."
The same can be said for all the artistic directors seeking to carve out a unique "Nutcracker" niche as they contend with an abundance of concurrent community, school and professional productions. Every one of those shows promises a magical and heartwarming experience. This year, moreover, company leaders must also factor in a production at the Music Center by the Kirov Ballet, which has succumbed to the American practice and is opening its version here for a six-performance run beginning Wednesday. (In Russia, "The Nutcracker" is performed year-round.)
The Kirov, widely considered one of the world's best ballet companies, will offer a distinctly Russian interpretation, one that adheres to a 1934 version created for the company by choreographer Vasily Vainonen. "This ballet has never been revised, and so it's a great opportunity for American audiences to see it," says Sergei Danilian, the Kirov's spokesman and producer of its North American tours.
Unlike the other, definitely more avant-garde "Nutcracker" in the Kirov's repertory, which was directed by the artist Mihail Chemiakin and premiered in 2001 to mixed reviews, Vainonen's version strays little from the original 1892 "Nutcracker," created by Marius Petipa for the Russian Imperial Ballet. "It is also homey and warm, and character is very important," Danilian says.
But in the Kirov production, tradition also dictates that Clara is called Masha and that, unlike in the majority of U.S. productions, she be portrayed by an adult ballerina. At the Music Center, three Kirov principals will alternate in the role.
"Masha should definitely be a principal dancer. Vainonen created that role with a high level of technical artistry meant for ballerinas, not children," Danilian says.
Favoring youth
Having a grown woman play Clara doesn't sit right with Yvonne Mounsey -- and not just because she runs the pre-professional Westside Ballet Company and has staged some three dozen "Nutcrackers" in which Clara has never been old enough to vote. "The ballet is so charming when Clara is a child, why would you mess with that?" she says.
Mounsey, a former New York City Ballet dancer who appeared as the center Spanish Girl in the premiere of George Balanchine's now iconic 1954 "Nutcracker," has loosely based her productions on the San Francisco Ballet's 1944 version and resists "doing anything that would upset the basic classicism of the ballet. But we do play with the details," she says.
That's resulted in several Westside Ballet "Nutcracker" traditions. After the nutcracker-turned-prince has slain the Mouse King, for example, Mounsey has a lone mouse remain onstage crying, "wiping her eyes with her tail. Then she sees the king's sword and walks off with it as a spotlight shines on her. It makes me cry every time."
Another signature touch, Mounsey recalls, stems from a year when she had a number of dancers "who weren't quite ready to be flowers" in "The Waltz of the Flowers," so she choreographed a short unison phrase for them to perform after the Arabian dance. "We called it the 'Candy Cane Dance,' and it gave more people a chance to perform," she says. "We use the overture in the music for this, so I apologize to Tchaikovsky. But it's still his music."
Although in only its third season, L.A. Ballet has already developed similar "unique little touches" in its "Nutcracker," says co-artistic director Colleen Neary. In Act 2, for example, the usual "Land of the Sweets" is the "Palace of the Dolls," where all of Clara's dolls come to life to dance for her.
More important "is the way we tell the story and how we try to create different levels of contact between characters," says Christensen.
