The Nutcracker: a Ballet to Dream about
BY TONI PIÑERA

Every time the ballet The Nutcracker returns to the stage of the García Lorca Hall of Havana’s Grand Theater around this time of year, we recognize that Tchaikovsky’s last score brims with joy, it regales the members of the audience with the wish to live, and of course it catches both the public and the dancers. No doubt about it, it’s a music made to dream and dance, with a very special characteristic: besides its well-known values as concert music, it’s ideal for dancing. About this work, Balanchine commented in the book by Simon Volkov, entitled Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: "The Nutcracker is Tchaikovsky’s master piece. Previously, he had said he would compose music that would make everybody cry."

Alicia Alonso’s choreography over the original by Ivanov with a script by Petipá, based on a free version by Alejandro Dumas (senior) of Hoffman’s short story The Nutcracker and the King of Mice, instils technical wisdom, stylistic nuances and humor, besides the fact that –as she has us used to in these classics- she absorbs the essence, "cleaning it" and making it closer. The most recent presentation of the classic performed over the weekend brought as a colorful note, that, along with the dancers of Cuba’s National Ballet Company (BNC) there were children from the Youth Ballet Ensemble from Hamilton (Canada), from the Alejo Carpentier Elementary Ballet School and from the Vocational Workshop of the BNC’s Dance Department, all of which were in turn joined by child singers from the National Lyric Theater.

Very youthful, then, was this presentation of The Nutcracker, where many roles are interpreted by new faces from the BNC that increasingly occupy key positions, not as replacements, but as the continuity of a School.

Together with them were other young artists with a lot of accumulated experience like Viengsay Valdés and Eliécer Bourzac, who interpreted, on Friday, The Queen and the Prince of the Snows. It was a moment full of lyricism, where each of them showed his or her technique -Viengsay, with that ability of blending virtuosity and pure art, and Eliécer with instants of bravado, always attentive to his partner. And the same thing happened with the couple made up by Anette Delgado and Javier Torres, transformed into the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Knight, respectively. Anette gave the character that confidence that characterizes her, because she’s an artist that early in her career reached maturity and today she enjoys her command of technique; while Javier Torres, with precise dancing and presenting himself nobly all the time, staked all his technical and interpretative skills to enhance the role

It’s worth highlighting from this evening -in which we should mention the public’s behavior, above all young, applauding every second and that seemed to ignore that ballet is a language, with its own phrases and words, and that inopportune interruptions cut the flow of the dance dialogue- the Clara (interpreted by Gretel Morejón), who contributed freshness and an excellent dance level, something similar to what Dani Hernández did with a happy Nutcracker. Joining the good work were the almost perfect Doll played by Yanela Piñera, enthusiastically applauded by the audience, The Moor (José Lozada) and Petruchka, interpreted by Yanier Gómez, as well as the trio of agile dancers (Maikel Hernández, Yonah Acosta and Alejandro Silva), members of the Russian dance. The Drosselmeyer, which has descended in time in the version by the BNC, found in Leandro Pérez a dancer that fits the role, although it was surprising that main dancer Dayron Vera, with excellent dramatic qualities, not to mention his dancing ones, didn’t play it this season. A moment of singular beauty was contributed to The Nutcraker by the scene of the Arab dance, which on that first evening found, on the musical side, an Orchestra out of balance and with faults at times.