United Kingdom English National Ballet’s Nutcracker: Dancers of English National Ballet, Students from Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Graham Sutherland (conductor). London Coliseum, 15.12.2022. (JO’D)
Production:
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography – Wayne Eagling
Set and Costume designs – Peter Farmer
Lighting – David Richardson
Cast included:
Clara – Julia Conway
Nephew – Francesco Gabriele Frola
Nutcracker – Fernando Carratalá Coloma
Drosselmeyer – Fabian Reimair
Mouse King – James Streeter
The choreography could have its moments of awkwardness. The substitution of Nephew for Nutcracker, and vice versa, could confuse anybody anticipating the primary time. But from the applause through the curtain calls on this yr’s very chilly opening evening, there could possibly be little doubt that English National Ballet’s Nutcracker (2010) had as soon as once more taken its viewers on a magical, emotional journey from which it returned each grateful and charmed.
The applause reached a crescendo for the musicians of English National Ballet Philharmonic and their conductor, Graham Sutherland. Tchaikovsky’s music for the ballet, with its similarities to the Symphony No 6 in B Minor and to The Queen of Spades (the place kids additionally play at troopers), is an emotional journey in itself. As the viewers clapped the smiling dancers, the strains of the surprisingly solemn accompaniment to the Grand Pas de deux nonetheless echoed around the auditorium.
This yr, maybe as a result of the corporate has a brand new Artistic Director Designate in Aaron S. Watson, it’s a Nutcracker with some modifications made. The Arabian Dance of the second act, already a lot altered from its risqué however narratively related unique kind, has been eliminated altogether to permit time for consideration of its ‘sensitivities’. The grandmother on the Act I social gathering is given a pair of darkish glasses to recommend that her ‘feeble wanderings’ are to be defined by sight loss quite than dementia. Yet she remains to be, oddly, topic to what quantities to home violence by the grandfather.
On the acquainted be aware there’s James Streeter as Mouse King. No different dancer within the function conveys that exact mixture of menace and humour. Precious Adams, a well-known dancer lately promoted to First Soloist, makes one thing fairly new of the social gathering scene by bringing her energy and expertise to the function of Louise, Clara’s sister. She does the identical for the dance of the Mirlitons in Act II.
Clara herself is danced by Julia Conway, whose delicate arms and musicality come into their very own through the Grand Pas. Francesco Gabriele Frola, as Nephew, companions her with attentiveness and a pretty heat. In the Spanish Dance, the primary to obtain vocal reward from the viewers, Daniel McCormick’s manner impresses, as all the time, and the way in which that Ivana Bueno holds her head and shoulders is itself a proof of why she received the ENB Emerging Dancer Award in 2020.
From the social dances of the ‘fractious’ kids’s social gathering (overseen by Fabian Reimair’s Drosselmeyer), to the equivocal Snowflakes within the Land of Snow, to The Puppet Theatre the place dance is one way or the other let loose, Nutcracker and its music give a lot. Starting and ending the ballet as a toddler, Clara learns in between about love and, or so the music appears to inform us, loss of life. Why else is that for the Grand Pas fairly so searing, fairly so solemn? As dancers line up for his or her curtain calls in entrance of designer Peter Farmer’s Jungian archetype home backdrop, the applause could also be for what the viewers has additionally learnt from the music about life and love and loss of life.
John O’Dwyer