Snow aplenty adds to magic of S.F. Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’
The weather outside isn’t exactly wintry, even by Bay Area standards, but it felt like the holidays inside the War Memorial Opera House on Wednesday, Dec. 13. On the opening night of San Francisco Ballet’s “Nutcracker” season, the rhinestones were polished to a dazzling gleam, the snow poured down from the rafters in marvelous flurries and the dancers performed with joie de vivre.
Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson set his 2004 production in 1915 San Francisco, a hometown conceit that evokes genteel post-Edwardian luxury in sets by Michael Yeargan and elegant costumes by the late Martin Pakledinaz. Modernity is on the horizon — the Stahlbaums’ Christmas tree is decorated with newfangled electric lights — but oldfashioned magic awaits.
The magician and master of ceremonies is Uncle Drosselmeyer, played to the hilt by Rubén Martín Cintas. Swirling his cape like a matador,
he fairly swashbuckled through the Act I party, kissing the ladies’ hands, awing the children with sleight of hand and gifting Clara with the enchanted nutcracker doll.
The party scene is a world unto itself, and if you look, you’ll see subplots unfolding: the maid fussily rearranging toys, little girls pretending to dance like the grown-ups and Grandfather peeking at the gift labels. Drosselmeyer’s dancing dolls — particularly Lauren Parrot as the candy-pink ballerina — are the icing on the cake.
Tomasson casts a true-to-age dancer as the adolescent Clara, which means that each performance rests in large part on the shoulders of a young San Francisco Ballet School student. He rightly entrusted the role to 14-year-old Olivia Callander, who portrayed a self-possessed girl eager to explore the world and confidently standing up to Shane Wexelman’s feisty younger brother Fritz. (Dancers in all roles change for every performance.)
The stagecraft is grand, good fun, and the set’s down-the-rabbithole transformation into Clara’s fevered dream always gets oohs and aahs. Enter the dashing Joseph Walsh as the Nutcracker Prince, ready to do battle with John Paul Simoens’ campy King of the Mice, and the fun really begins.
The dancers’ vibrant energy kept the performance at a good clip, or maybe it was Martin West’s remarkably zippy pacing of the orchestra. They looked refreshed and enthusiastic, starting with Frances Chung’s and Vitor Luiz’s crisp jumps as Queen and King of the Snow (and plenty of it — good to see that the full blizzard is back after last year’s lighter application).
Sasha De Sola boasts some of the best pirouettes in the company, and they lent zing to her Sugar Plum Fairy. Ludmila Bizalion’s phrasing made for a mesmerizing Arabian variation, and Lonnie Weeks bounded through the Chinese dance. Esteban Hernandez, Blake Kessler and Myles Thatcher brought the house down in the high-jumping, fast-spinning Russian choreography.
Walsh returned to squire Maria Kochetkova in the final grand pas de deux, which represents Clara’s fantasy of her future self. With her Bolshoi-trained technique and innate sense of phrasing, Kochetkova was captivating in her solo to the twinkling celesta music; as she danced, the rest of the world seemed to just drift away. Walsh was terrific, catching Kochetkova’s shoulder leaps with one arm, then executing huge sissonnes and flowing turns in his own variations.
Clara eventually wakes up and returns to real life, and the audience with her. Although we have to shake off the pixie dust, the pleasure of this “Nutcracker” will last through the holiday season.