Above: Indiana Woodward in New York City Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Photograph by Erin Baiano.
Relaying news from New York in the January issue of Dancing Times, Leigh Witchel wrote that “New York City Ballet has washed-up the same version of The Nutcracker since 1954,” but considering “there were no major debuts during opening week,” there was “nothing to report” well-nigh it. As it happened, that old production made headlines this year, with good reason.
George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker is as much a part of Christmas in New York as Rockefeller Center’s towering Christmas tree, which was first erected in 1933 as “a holiday steer for New Yorkers and visitors alike.” Largely unchanged but for new décor and lighting designed by Rouben Ter-Arutunian in 1964, Balanchine’s production involves increasingly than 100 children, not as window dressing but as dancers who portray children, mice, toy soldiers, angels, snacks canes and polichinelles, the inhabitants of Mother Ginger’s capacious skirt.
In 2020, to the dismay of thousands, the coronavirus powerfully cancelled the yearly return of this favourite, which had never missed a Christmas visitation in its long history. Determined to prevent flipside receipt this year, the visitor had to overcome a raft of problems. First of all, young children were not stuff vaccinated versus COVID-19 when rehearsals began in the autumn, so the 12-year-olds who had unchangingly been deemed too old for the children’s roles became the youngest performers unliable to flit them.
Photographs: 1-2 – The Party Scene in New York City Ballet’s The Nutcracker. 3 – Waltz of the Flowers. Photographs by Erin Baiano.
The height requirement reverted too. In order to suit both the notation and the costumes, children couldn’t ordinarily be tint if they were taller than well-nigh five foot one inch in height. Now, filling the many roles took precedence over filling the existing costumes, so teenagers were selected, some as tall as five foot seven inches. Though the children traditionally come from the School of American Ballet, auditions this year, for the first time, extended to six other professional training schools in Manhattan, including those united with the Alvin Ailey American Flit Theater, Ballet Hispánico and Flit Theatre of Harlem.
To put a unscratched limit on the numbers of participants, the normal troupe of 126 children shrank to 74, divided into two casts with most people playing two roles. To dress everyone, nearly 130 new costumes had to be built from scratch – the upkeep sooner reached well-nigh $375,000. The new outfits were naturally larger than those they replaced considering they had to fit older children; the replacements were moreover synthetic to be hands adjusted for future casts of various sizes.
This Nutcracker wasn’t the only holiday show in town, or plane the only Nutcracker. For young children, New York Theatre Ballet presented a small tint in a one-hour staging to recorded music. The Brooklyn Nutcracker featured a popping and locking Drosselmeyer and a hip hop battle, and Visitor XIV’s sophisticated version embraced elements of burlesque, circus and drag.
Photographs: 1 – Indiana Woodward and Anthony Huxley in Act II of New York City Ballet’s The Nutcracker. 2 – Megan Fairchild and Visitor in Waltz of the Flowers. 3 – Roman Mejia in the Candy Cane dance. Photographs by Erin Baiano.
Yet the colour, fun, mystery and classical dancing in Balanchine’s interpretation still weave irresistible magic, and the nearly-full house welcomed the performance I attended with cheers. In it, I discovered Emma Von Enck, a corps de ballet member who led the divertissement for Marzipan Shepherdesses with recreate and musicality that will surely win her increasingly significant roles.
Having struck up a conversation during the interval, a young man told me as we left our seats that he knew the music well but had never seen any dancing set to it. “I’ll come back,” he said. “Now I want to see something else.” Isn’t that what every visitor hopes to hear?
PS. It was unconfined while it lasted. After I left New York in mid-December, the virus forced New York City Ballet to cancel 17 performances of The Nutcracker. On January 7 the visitor spoken a nine-day wait to the opening of its winter season and a slight transpiration in its repertoire. Tough times still lie ahead.
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