New Delights in the Kingdom of Sweets
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New York City Ballet fielded a very young, almost entirely new lineup for Sunday afternoon’s performance of “The Nutcracker.” Even when miscast or bravely coping with debut jitters, presence and personality carried the new performers through.
As the Sugar Plum Fairy, Ana Sophia Scheller had to work against physical type. She has given an excellent account of herself in a number of roles over the past year, but she is not the ideal candidate to embody grand ballerina regality. She’s a little shorter than usual for this type of role, and while slim, her muscles are fuller than today’s image of the grand ballerina. (Of course, when “The Nutcracker,” received its world premiere at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1892, virtually all ballerinas were shorter and larger-muscled than almost any dancer today.) But Balanchine himself liked casting against orthodoxy in this manner. Ms. Scheller wisely never reached for a magisterial authority she doesn’t yet possess; rather, she distinguished herself instead by wreathing her arms into three-dimensional flourishes. She was a toothsome, and even coquettish, incarnation.
Ms. Scheller’s Cavalier was the always-interesting Tyler Angle. In his first venture into the danseur noble genre, it was visible that he was trying to project a thoughtfully constructed persona of princely masculinity. But his performance was more impressive for its mental construction than its physical execution. In Balanchine’s “Nutcracker,” the Cavalier dances only in the Coda. I’m sure Mr. Angle is capable of dancing much better than he did here in his brief solos; neither his jumps nor his grand pirouettes were as clean or steady as one would have liked.
Mr. Angle is a good partner and his pas de deux with Ms. Scheller went without flubs. But it seemed a little sluggish, as did Ms. Scheller in her solo, perhaps because neither dancer was quite attuned to the tempi of guest conductor Richard Fletcher, who made a point of not racing through the score.
Leading the Waltz of the Flowers, Sara Mearns was, oddly enough, less poised than she’d been in her debut as Odette/Odile in the full-length “Swan Lake” last January. The steps were there and the physical aptitude impressive, but her performance was blurred, as if she hadn’t studied its blooming metaphors, nor the way each one of her darting appearances needs to establish its unique character. She compensated, however, by demonstrating genuine musical responsiveness.
Among the other debuts in the Act II divertissements, Georgina Pazcoguin was a handsome Arabian treat as “Coffee.” Troy Schumacher came through the sallies of “Tea” with flying colors. Masahiro Suehara, a recent School of American Ballet graduate who is listed here as a guest artist, was hoop-master of the Candy Canes. Mr. Suehara handled the role easily, and will undoubtedly become more relaxed and a little less tight in the air.
Mr. Fletcher and violin soloist Kurt Nikkanen sought a lushness as they played the entr’acte from “The Sleeping Beauty” that Balanchine interpolated into his “Nutcracker.” In “The Sleeping Beauty,” this is played before the scene of Aurora’s awakening; here Balanchine inserted it into the first act to show us the wizard Herr Drosselmeier visiting Marie as she sleeps and working enchantment on the nutcracker doll she clutches.
Kyle Froman made his debut as Drosselmeier. He played the role accurately according to the script the company employs, but that script has become fixed in the wrong groove. A more interesting vision of Drosselmeier would posit him as more eerie and macabre and less of a seedy Melvillian con man.
This cast repeats the afternoon of December 20 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).