The Nutcracker” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the Hippodrome Theatre Through December 15
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“The Nutcracker” By Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky At the Hippodrome Theatre through December 15 By James Cooper TCHAI—COUGH—SKY Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” is a classical dance piece beloved throughout the world. Adapted from E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” the story blends nicely with Tchaikovsky’s music, which fills the entire Hippodrome Theatre. While the music pulls the audience into a magical world, however, the dancing is mostly a bore. There are multiple instances where the dancers simply paint an emotion with their movements rather than truly experience it. There’s a difference between exhibiting emotion and just illustrating emotion through movement. The former evokes emotion throughout the audience and the latter just shows the audience what this emotion looks like. During the Christmas party scene at the beginning of the show, there is an overall sense that the dancers are rushing. The agile dancers aren’t taking their moments and consequently exaggerate their emotions and take the audience out of the ballet mentally. For instance, this rushing causes the dancers to miss their marks and fall off the musical beat. This rhythmic error causes the audience to stray from life within the Russian castle and feel they aren’t truly witnessing a life-size nutcracker dance with a little girl at a Christmas party. The exaggerated emotions and missed beats create a disconnect between the performers and those watching. Though it may be increasingly exaggerated at times, the dancing does have its breathtaking moments. When Drosselmeyer is giving out gifts to the small children at the party, a dancer portraying a doll in a red dress succeeds in evoking emotion by moving as if she were a stiff Barbie doll; her ability to stiffen her legs makes one smile in awe. This mix of boring and amazing performances takes the audience on a rollercoaster of responses. “The Nutcracker” is a magical tale of the young Masha (Olga Kifyak) and her Christmas present of a nutcracker (Viktor Shchabarkov) from her Uncle Drosselmeyer (Vitaly Voloshin). After her brother Fritz (Ruslan Vovk/ Dmitriy Kolos) breaks her new nutcracker, Masha embarks on a mesmerizing dream filled with evil rats, trips to a land of sweets, visits to a winter wonderland and breathtaking performances by dancers from all over the world. Watching Masha experience all these new adventures continues to surprise the audience throughout the ballet. The show opens to a very detailed backdrop of Drosselmeyer’s colorful castle as his party guests make their way to the front gate. Because this ballet requires a lot of floor space, it’s limited in the use of props. The uncredited set designer does a phenomenal job in using only elaborate backdrops to illustrate changes in environment. In the opening scene, this designer places the first backdrop—unlike the others—much closer to the edge of the stage to show the audience how far away the castle is in relation to the dancers. Another fascinating concept is the synchronization of the orchestra below the stage, and the dancers above. The dancers need to be absolutely on point with the cues of the music and the orchestra needs to be completely on pace to make sure the dancers can hear all of their cues. Though this concept is important, the dancers don’t always match up with their cues during the performance. There are instances where dancers are so off pace with their kicks that it’s obvious to even the most oblivious audience member. The performance makes up for this lack of synchronization with its clear and crisp orchestral performance. Though the orchestra is a very positive aspect of the show, there are occasional instances where the dancers impress the audience as well. During the ballroom scene towards the end of the show, a line of male dancers in pink leotards begin to spin rapidly in the air. This rapid spinning reminds one of the blades within a blender—spinning extremely quickly and slicing the air as the dancers do. The dancers’ performances require an immense amount of strength, focus and trust. There are instances where the audience is in complete awe at the abilities of the dancers. In contrast, there are times where the dancers’ over-exaggeration of emotions rapidly pull the audience out of the world of Russian ballet. For instance, the two unnamed characters in the Arabian dance (Elena Petrachenko and Sergey Chumakov) make for an amazing duo. The trust that they have when performing risky tricks radiates throughout the theater and creates an intense relationship with the audience. In many instances one can hear a simultaneous sharp inhalation from the audience at the sight of the dancers’ intricate performance. During one of the final scenes, Petrachenko is wrapped around Chumakov’s body and falls, but does so in a gracefully quick manner, sharply slowing to catch herself right before her moment of impact with the ground—all while still attached to Chumakov’s body using her legs and arms. This is by far one of the most riveting moments throughout the whole show. In contrast to this immensely interesting performance, Kifyak becomes increasingly exaggerated and unreal in her interpretation of Masha. As Fritz breaks her doll in the beginning of the show, Masha becomes terribly upset. It’s already hard for dancers to illustrate direct emotions solely with their bodies without words, but Kifyak does so in a very unbelievable way. To show that she’s upset, Kifyak turns her back and places her hands over her eyes as if to draw immediate attention to her supposedly crying disposition. It is as if she has no emotional connection and just wants to tell the audience that Masha is upset rather than showing the audience that Masha is upset. The Moscow Ballet’s interpretation of “The Nutcracker” is geared towards children. The use of bright and soft colors in the backdrops remind one of an animated Disney film such as “Sleeping Beauty” or Hasbro’s childhood game Candy Land. Though this performance may blow the minds of young children, an adult may find the show boring. Because the sets are so childish and the acting is so overdone, an adult may have a hard time believing what the dancers are trying to convey. The orchestral performance is amazing, and the occasional amazement of certain performers literally takes the audience’s breath away. From spinning blades to controlled falling, the Moscow Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” is a performance any child would enjoy, creating exhilarating memories forever. Adults, on the other hand, may cherish the memory of taking their children to the show rather than actually seeing the show. “The Nutcracker” By Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky At the Hippodrome Theatre through December 15 By Dori Coplan A BROKEN NUTCRACKER “The Nutcracker,” now at the Hippodrome Theatre, began with men and women dancing across the stage to attend the Stahlbaums’ Christmas party. Once inside the house, the children twirled center stage in front of the radiant Christmas tree while the adults danced on the side. The scenery, although two-dimensional, created a lovely image of a whimsical home with bright pastel colors. Yet the beautiful scenery was painfully undercut by the mediocre performers. Starting from the numbers “The Decorating and Lighting the Christmas Tree” and “Marche,” the professional dancers seemed to move obliviously to those around them, losing sync with one another and appearing almost sloppy. The orchestra is perfect, as are the artistic sets, but the dancers are different. Though they did not stray from the rhythm of the orchestra, they differed between one another by just milliseconds, but this was enough to cause audience members to feel that something was off throughout the ballet. The play continued by telling the story of Masha who receives a life-size nutcracker as a present from her uncle. Although the live performance of Tchaikovsky’s compositions sounded incomparably melodious, the ballet itself was strangely lacking by comparison. Audience members were unsure where to focus their attention since the unsynchronized ballet combined with the fantastical scenery and the rich costumes created visual confusion. The dancing talent expected from the performers left the audience dejected. After all, this troupe had traveled to America from Moscow as they celebrated their 20th anniversary. Even the main characters, Masha (Olga Kifyak) and the Nutcracker Prince (Viktor Shchabarkov), lacked the ballet flair expected of professional Russian dancers. Although Kifyak and Shchabarkov were not unskilled, the choreography did not allow them to display any audience-exciting moves such as graceful lifts or intricate footwork. Their choreography and that of almost all the other characters was at its best simply crowd-pleasing. The only really breathtaking choreography was performed in Act II’s “Coffee (Arabian Dance)” by Elena Petrachenko and Sergey Chumakov. Wearing the red and blue scarves of the desert, the dancers employed snakelike, flexible moves which seemed to defy the laws of gravity. Chumakov nimbly picked Petrachenko up as if she were weightless; she continued to bend and then fluidly roll off Chumakov into a graceful split, all the while remaining perfectly in tune to the seductive live music. However, this number, despite its utter brilliance, could not redeem the ballet as a whole. The plot detailed the story of Masha, a girl whose brother broke her new nutcracker shaped like a man. Dejected, she retired to her room and dreamed of saving her nutcracker from the Mouse King and turning him into a prince. The two of them then traveled to the Land of Sweets where they were greeted by delicacies from round the world.