DANCE REVIEW: THE NUTCRACKER
13 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 5 out of 5

Let’s be perfectly clear: When we wish for an “old-fashioned Christmas,” no one advocates a return to a ‘holiday’ that involved packing water in from the well after you’d visited the outdoor privy, or chopping firewood, likely with the same axe with which you had just guillotined a turkey that still has to be eviscerated.

But in the face of all the modcons that add ease to the lustre of our Christmases, we long for the kind of Christmas that has always been the domain of the child — a Christmas filled not only with dreams but rich smells and sweet tastes, populated by fairies and jolly avuncular old men laden with magical gifts. That kind of Christmas fills our hearts with joy and yes, sets visions of sugar plums dancing in young heads.

And happily, that is precisely the kind of Christmas the National Ballet of Canada captures to perfection in its staging of THE NUTCRACKER — choreographer James Kudelka’s magical rethinking of E.T.A. Hoffman’s timeless fairytale and the festival ballet made of it by Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. THE NUTCRACKER opened its seasonal run at the Four Seasons Saturday to the delight of children of all ages.

Currently in its 16th edition, Kudelka’s production, of course, captures the old fashioned Christmas we yearn for, thanks in part to the design genius of Santo Loquasto, whose sumptuous sets and costumes evoke Czarist Russia and seem bathed as much in the glow of memory as in the golden light of Jennifer Tipton’s design.

But, once the corps de ballet takes over, their numbers delightfully swollen by students drawn from the National Ballet School, all of Loquasto’s and Tipton’s work becomes mere icing on a truly gorgeous cake. The timeless music of Tchaikovsky’s score fills the hall, served up by the NBOC Orchestra, bolstered on occasion by the youthful carolling of VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto, all under the baton of David Briskin, and it becomes Kudelka’s show all the way. His storytelling capabilities and dance artistry combine to weave a tale that sweeps young Marie (Anastasia Komienkova) and her brother Misha (Joel Exposito) off to the magical kingdom of the frozen land of the Snow Queen and the stage is filled not just with movement, but with magic.

That’s thanks to superb performers like Rebekah Rimsay (stepping flawlessly into the role of Baba, long the domain of the recently-retired Victoria Bertram), Piotr Stanczyk (an ever more impressive Uncle Nikolai), Xiao Nan Yu (a dazzling Snow Queen) and Stephanie Hutchison and Etienne Lavigne (aloof but loving parents to Marie and Misha). Joined by an array of dancing horses, roller-skating bears, warring rodents, giant Christmas trees and, oh yes, a magical Nutcracker Prince (a technically flawless Zdenek Konvalina) who just happens to bear a striking resemblance to the stableboy Peter, it’s a breathtaking first act, filled with fun.

But it is in the second act, of course, that Kudelka truly soars, setting his and our imaginations free in the process. As Misha and Marie continue their voyage and end up in the land of a magical Sugar Plum Fairy — a flawless Bridgett Zehr seemingly dancing on the very notes of the score, trailing spun sugar in her wake — one is torn between watching the magic play out on the stage and watching it play out on the childish faces around them.

In a land where chocolates dance and flowers swirl, where darling lambs frolic and beautiful bees buzz, all things seem possible, especially that old fashioned Christmas of which we all dream. And, of course, we mean that in the very finest possible sense of the words.