L.A. dancer comes home for Clara’s Dream
Edmonton-trained Mortensen dances Nutcracker Prince
Clara’s Dream: A Ukrainian Folk Ballet Companies: Shumka Dancers, Virsky — The Ukrainian State Folk Dance Company, The Kyiv Ballet When: Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Where Jubilee Auditorium Tickets: $32.65 to $84.65 through Ticketmaster Info: clarasdream.ca Edmonton-trained dancer Jeff Mortensen, a past finalist on So You Think You Can Dance Canada and former Cirque du Soleil performer, is based out of Los Angeles these days. He calls L.A. “the hub of commercial dance opportunities,” but it was a special Edmonton dance gig that drew him home for the holidays this year.
Mortensen has been back in Edmonton, his old Shumka stomping grounds, for the full stretch from Christmas through New Year’s and on through Ukrainian Christmas to dance the lead Nutcracker Prince in Clara’s Dream this weekend.
Before coming home, the gig sent Jeff off to his heritage homeland, Ukraine, for an intensive two-week classical ballet crash course with Kyiv Ballet’s resident choreographer Viktor Lytynov and Kyiv Ballet dance partner, Tetiana Tsygankova, who is dancing Clara.
It had been six years since he last travelled to Ukraine with Shumka. “It was awesome and crazy to see the changes the country has gone through. First of all, the infrastructure is clearly being modernized in Kyiv to bring it closer to the West. And the protests were going on. The energy is different. It is definitely trying to progress more, which I think is good.”
The Prince role demands classical partner work and classical adagio, both of which were new to Jeff. “I’ve never partnered classically, so that was the hardest thing and the whole point of me going to Ukraine. There is a set way to aid your partner. There are techniques that have been passed down, ways to hold the girl when she goes up and where exactly to place your hands when she comes down. How much weight to give her — it is all very calculated.”
Mortensen stayed a block away from the main opera theatre in Kyiv and spent long days there rehearsing.
“The first couple of days we didn’t have a translator and it was a slow process. There was a lot of patience involved, thankfully. There was a lot of trust on her (Tsygankova’s) part because I don’t speak the language and she knows that I have never classically partnered before. There was a lot of trust given on both of our ends ... that’s kind of how it works in the dance world. You are flown all around the world to go dance with people you have never met before and you have to instantly form a trusting bond.”
It was last year that Shumka, Virsky (Ukraine’s foremost folk ballet company) and the Kyiv Ballet united for the first time to deliver the first Nutcracker ballet conveyed in the Ukrainian folk ballet dance lexicon. It was the classical ballet elements performed by a male Kyiv ballet dancer in the role of the Prince that provided the weakest moments in an otherwise smashing production. Mortensen delivered a rambunctious Fritz last year and fit seamlessly into the Shumka ranks for the big male group numbers.
There is little doubt that by casting a strong, versatile, Shumkatrained dancer like Mortensen as the Prince this year, producers are aiming to improve the chances of the production finding longer staying power. So while Mortensen is expected to bring his classical ballet game up to dance the Prince, he has also been given artistic licence by Lytynov, the choreographer, to put his own dynamic spin into it.
“I’m trying to make it a little more exciting. I think the Prince can always be seen as a bit of a dud. He’s the Prince and he acts all gallant and stuff but I’d like for him to be a little more human. When he does come back to life and he is no longer a doll, he should be human, and more natural. He’s taking Clara on this journey but he is also on this journey ... he is THE guy and this is a magical world. He can’t just be stiff. The character is definitely evolving with the things I bring to the table.”
There are high hopes for Clara’s Dream to find an annual spot in Edmonton’s holiday performance offerings, akin to the perennial success of the Citadel’s A Christmas Carol — not to mention the pressure to recover the significant cost of such a lavish production. These types of shows can’t make it into the black over one year. The hope is that the production will find touring legs, another costly venture, but one that has potential to generate revenue over the long haul.
But after the smorgasbord of holiday performance offerings throughout December, from humble school recitals to the big production Singing Christmas Tree, A Christmas Carol and Alberta Ballet’s The Nutcracker, is there any room left come January for another Nutcracker?
The second version of Clara’s Dream will go a long way toward answering that question. Mortensen says the dancers are focused on giving their all to ensure it sticks with audiences universally.
“There is actually something for everyone,” says Mortensen. “When I was in Ukraine, Viktor Lytynov, the choreographer — that was the one thing he kept saying day after day: ‘it can’t just be Ukrainian.’
“If we want it to go on tour, it has to be for everyone.”