Rushing Through a Classic

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The New York Sun

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be New York City Ballet’s philosophy about George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker,” which resumed its annual five-week run on Friday. That is wise policy for a beloved production that is probably the best “Nutcracker” in the world. What tinkering there has been since the 1954 company premiere generally has not brought improvements; a front cloth depicting the star of Bethlehem, for example, borders on kitsch.


But “The Nutcracker” itself has been revisited and revamped repeatedly. When “The Nutcracker” was first choreographed by Lev Ivanov for its 1892 world premiere at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, its climax was a pas de deux for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier, done in the grand Petersburg manner. After Vasily Vainonen revised it in then-Leningrad in 1934, the Sugar Plum Fairy danced with five similarly costumed cavaliers; unsurprisingly, Vainonen’s adagio seems redolent of totalitarian impersonality. During the 1960s, Soviet choreographers found in the mournful sound of Tchaikovsky’s adagio support for a bittersweet farewell to childhood. When Mikhail Baryshnikov set the ballet for American Ballet Theatre in 1976, he adopted the ideas current among the Soviet avant-garde of his time: Both Marie and the Nutcracker prince were danced by adults, and the Sugar Plum adagio became a trio for Marie, her adult cavalier, and the avuncular wizard Drosselmeier.


In Baryshnikov’s version, the girl seems torn between Drosselmeier’s protection and the masculine potency of her Prince. But Balanchine’s concept skirts the heroine’s sexual or emotional maturation almost completely. In Act I, to an interpolated entre’acte from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty,” Marie takes the broken Nutcracker doll to bed with her. Drosselmeier, who has attended the Christmas celebration earlier that evening, reappears and repairs the doll while she sleeps. The bed vanishes into the wings and reappears with a boy-size Nutcracker, who defeats the Mouse King and then is revealed as Drosselmeier’s nephew. He goes with Marie to the Kingdom of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy – a sovereign, matriarchal figure of benevolence. She entertains the two children with a suite of divertissements performed by her court before they return home by magic sleigh ride.


On Friday night, unfortunately, the sense of sumptuousness that is a sine qua non of the score and the story was obliterated by excessively fast tempos. Speed was always a trademark of Balanchine’s aesthetic, and he was in his last years insisting, perhaps capriciously, on faster and faster tempos. Even so, Friday night’s conductor, Andrea Quinn, may have gone beyond what Balanchine would have approved.


In Act I, the orchestral tempos did convey a sense of the children’s anticipatory excitement, but also seemed to suggest that the company was worried the adults in the audience would be bored by the pantomimic exposition. The first act’s concluding Snowflake ensemble was jerky enough, but in Act II, where most of the virtuosic dancing occurs, the dancers became frantic and spasmodic.


Perhaps the choreographic highlight of Balanchine’s production is the Act II Waltz of the Flowers, created for a corps de ballet led by a female Dewdrop. Dewdrop was danced at the 1954 premiere by Tanaquil Le Clercq, one of the company’s most iconic ballerinas. Le Clercq was a tall, long-limbed, innately lyric dancer whose technique was developed by Balanchine to achieve maximum speed and brilliance that remained informed by adagio breadth. Balanchine’s choreography for Dewdrop combined huge bounding leaps with delicate filigreed runs on pointe and split-second poses where the ballerina stretched her limbs into beautifully long-stemmed imagery.


On Friday, Dewdrop was danced by Ashley Bouder. Only five years after joining the company, Ms. Bouder was made a principal dancer this year. Both here and in “Fearful Symmetries” at NYCB’s season-opening performance earlier last week, she seemed a little strained. As Dewdrop, she was technically strong and accurate, but the tempo made her seem manic; she resorted to an overdrive energy so fierce that she threw herself off balance in the fouettes.


The Sugar Plum Fairy was Sofiane Sylve, who joined NYCB in 2003 after becoming a ballerina in Europe. In “Fearful Symmetries,” she had been appropriately angular and exaggerated, but here she danced with correct classical propriety, even as she introduced a slight note of what might be called Viennese piquancy. Ms. Sylve has everything she needs to become a great Sugar Plum, but since the adagio was conducted as if it were a coda, Ms. Sylve and her partner, Charles Askegard, were forced to scurry perfunctorily through the steps. Mr. Askegard was in excellent shape for his coda solo, but after the adagio, it was something of a redundancy. Breathless, he and Ms. Sylve looked like they were running a relay race.


Saturday night’s cast was on the whole more assured, due at least in part to a slightly more humane tempo established by conductor Maurice Kaplow. As Dewdrop, the tall and long limbed Teresa Reichlin recalled the Le Clercq prototype. Ms. Reichlin’s taste was as impressive as her skill and beauty: She never overdid the role’s charm quotient. Ms. Reichlin appeared to comprehend that when Dewdrop bourrees downstage, extending her arms to the audience, she is proffering the largesse of intoxicating authority – she is not meant to be glad-handing us.


Wendy Whelan danced the Sugar Plum Fairy on Saturday night. Ms. Whelan’s long experience in this role was apparent by the way she distilled the ballet’s imaginative world from the moment the entered. Excessive speed aside, Balanchine wanted the Sugar Plum’s adagio to be played con brio, emphasizing the excitement in the music rather than its tragic overtones. Since the hallowed first interpretation by Maria Tallchief, New York City Ballet ballerinas continue to make this adagio regal and ecstatic. Sturdily partnered by Nilas Martins, Ms. Whelan’s phrasing and accents provided a grandeur that supplied its own emotional poignancy.



Until December 30 at the New York State Theater (Lincoln Center, 212-870-5570).


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