A Kingdom of Treats
It's rough to start a five-week run of "The Nutcracker" the day after Thanksgiving, but the New York City Ballet does it every year. Perhaps that's why the NYCB dancers, though polished and conscientious, nevertheless seemed a little flat throughout the story telling of Act I on Friday night. And in Act II, in which most of the dancing occurs, the dancers appeared keyed-up, but not quite in the right way: They didn't oversell themselves, but they labored just a little too strenuously — at times, they seemed over stimulated. Nevertheless, their determination to put on a good show shone through the evening's entertainment.
NYCB's "The Nutcracker" is a unique experience in the ballet repertory. When the curtain rises on Act I, Marie, the young daughter of the Stahlbaums, peeks through the keyhole of the family salon to glimpse the Christmas preparations going on inside. The wall separating her from the salon is actually is a scrim, which becomes transparent, disclosing the sights Marie is ostensibly taking in through the minute vantage of the keyhole. It's an effective way to frame the ballet as unfolding from a child's point of view, and allows the phantasmagoria that subsequently occurs extra license for extravagance by virtue of the fact that it has been conjured in the fantasies of children.
Throughout the Act I party scene, the audience is privy to a range of developmental earmarks in the behavior of children and their interaction with their parents. The children resist their parents' injunctions, but then often submit to them. They squabble, and are rambunctious. They engage in a boys-versusgirls tug-of-war dispute, but then dance together graciously when their parents insist they must.
In Act I, the audience's attention is directed to the way adults and children walk, move, and express themselves in gesture. Our eyes and sensibilities are thus uniquely primed to enjoy the divertissements of Act II, which take place in the enchanted Kingdom of Sweets.
We've been conditioned to acutely explore expression through movement, and we retain this lens watching the formal, classical dancing that begins with the Snow scene at the end of Act I and comes to the fore in Act II.
Dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Wendy Whelan displayed floating and majestically detached arms, and yet proved almost as explicitly expressive as the performers' pantomime in Act I. When she summoned or proclaimed to her kingdom subjects, her directives were invested with the inexorable authority of the Lilac Fairy in "The Sleeping Beauty." Her greetings to the children arriving at the beginning of Act II, welcoming them to her realm and acknowledging their story of travel and travails, were enveloped in warmth and sympathy. There was never any doubt that she reigned over this kingdom.
In her dancing, Ms. Whelan scaled down some of her jumps, but displayed no diminishment in the technical integrity of her performance. She manifested a mastery of the musical timing that, as always in Balanchine ballets, gives zest and surprise to familiar steps. In her variation, Ms. Whelan's crisply executed passés contained just the right startling edge, allowing the audience to believe she possessed unexpected quivers in her bow of magical powers. Dexterously partnered by Nikolai Hübbe in the pas de deux, her leg extended fully into arabesque penché at exactly the pace needed to convey a satisfying, beatific serenity. And her bends backward in Mr. Hübbe's arms at the musical crescendos were properly triumphant. The orchestra, conducted by Maurice Kaplow, provided the right accompaniment to enable the two leads to bring to fruition the full potential of their pas de deux.
On Friday night, all the second-act divertissements were well done. Among the highlights was Teresa Reichlin's Coffee, in which she wittily deployed a double-jointed slinkiness. And leading the "Waltz of the Flowers," Sofiane Sylve as Dewdrop was so charged she occasionally looked like she'd crack the floor right open, but her virtuosity was legitimately thrilling.
Until December 30 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).
