THE RETURN OF THE CLASSIC
Alberta Ballet stages The Nutcracker
Sure as their Sugar Plum Fairy, Alberta Ballet will be performing Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker 25 times this holiday season, with shows in Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and Vancouver.
Sporting a cast of 32 dancers, six more trainees, another 60 children as young as eight years — recruited in each city to play the mice, soldiers, rats, party kids and pages — and different orchestras, it’s splendid entertainment for family audiences and a cash cow for the dance company.
Of course, The Nutcracker is a source of Christmas merriment in many parts of the world — but why has it become such an enduring classic?
“It’s got all the angles,” says Edmund Stripe, the choreographer who first designed Alberta Ballet’s current production in 2008. “It’s a fairy tale or fable, if you like, but it’s got action, adventure and romance. You’ve got your little mice and the children for the cuteness factor and then the Cossack rats battling the tin soldiers for the action aspect.
“That’s part of the attraction, and it’s almost as Christmasy as turkey and pies. It’s a tradition in itself.”
Stripe says the ballet’s “character dances,” or musical cameos (Waltz of the Flowers, Sugar Plum Fairy, Arab Dance, Chinese Dance) are among the most beloved in dance. And move over Darth Vader — you’ve got to love a story where the villain is a Rat King.
It wasn’t always that way. The Nutcracker’s premiere in St. Petersburg, Russia, in December 1892 was not a critical success. To be fair to the performers, that show was probably ill-fated since the ballet came as the second half of an evening that featured the composer’s full-length opera Iolanta in the first half.
Whatever disappointment that reception held for Tchaikovsky, it was apparently not his favourite ballet, ranking third after Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake.
Who knows what he would have made of its stature today. Along with the 1812 Overture, parts of The Nutcracker score are among his most recognized works, and the ballet’s popularity has grown continually since American companies started programming it in the 1960s.
The story is a simple setup for a series of aural and visual treats.
Drawn from E.T.A. Ho mann’s tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, it’s set around Christmas Eve festivities at the Stahlbaum home. Daughter Clara is thrilled when she’s presented with a nutcracker in the shape of a toy soldier by her godfather, toymaker Herr Drosselmeyer.
Before long, her brother Fritz breaks the toy and she’s heartbroken.
But once Clara falls asleep, everything changes: Toys come to life and her Nutcracker turns into a prince who whisks her away to an enchanted land.
The Alberta Ballet version models toymaker Drosselmeyer after Tchaikovsky’s real-life appearance.
As a student at the Royal Ballet, Stripe played a tin soldier in Rudolph Nureyev’s production of The Nutcracker, and he says part of his inspiration dates back to those years. He danced in two other versions before putting on the choreographer’s hat for Alberta Ballet. This take on Tchaikovsky’s Christmas confection is a mix of styles reflecting his years of training in the Italian system and some Russian influences.
“It’s very set in classical ballet technique, but I’ve used several different methods,” Stripe says. “As the language of dance is concerned, the Italian method is a little understated while the Russian is a little more overstated and given to longer lines.”
Historical associations posed other questions. The party or parlour scene set is inspired by Tchaikovsky’s own living room, before multiple scrims or backdrops work to create a fantasy world.
“I needed to keep it reasonably traditional, but I wanted to buck that a little and get away from the more common German influence. Our costume and set designer Zach Brown wanted to set it in early 20th-century Russia and I was happy with that, so it’s very opulent, very rich.”
Born in London, Stripe says his love of dance started with the fact his parents were both “very keen” ballet fans. When they took him to see a Royal Ballet production of Cinderella at age four, the seeds were sewn.
“I told my parents, ‘I really like that jumping about; I’d like to do that.’ I was enrolled in ballet school, and I’ve never questioned that decision since,” he says.
Since his training at London’s Royal Ballet School, Stripe’s work as a dancer or choreographer has taken him around the world for companies in Australia, Singapore, Portugal and back to England, where he met his wife in the London City Ballet. He was invited to become ballet master at Alberta Ballet in 2002 and serves as the company’s artist-in-residence and director of the Alberta Ballet School.
A stereotype has it that choreographers sprout from the washedup bodies of seasoned dancers, but Stripe started choreographing at just 17 when a teacher encouraged him to do something for a competition
in London. He created his first professional piece for a company in Portugal in 1983.
His first full-length ballet and one of his most acclaimed works was Alberta Ballet’s 2006 production of Alice in Wonderland, while his 2008 Nutcracker has drawn praise across Canada.