“The Nutcracker” may be a steady reliable holiday tradition about nuts and candies, but that doesn’t mean it has to get stale.
Even the companies that have been doing this familiar ballet for over half a century are infusing it with dozens of fresh young faces every year. Few shows of any kind involve so many child performers, many of whom have been training for months at local dance schools for the opportunity to run around in the big opening party scene or portray a sugar plum fairy.
The big excitement this year is the return of a live orchestra to the long-running Connecticut Ballet production of the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky opus. This year, the four performances of Connecticut Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” at The Bushnell will feature the Hartford Symphony Orchestra conducted by the symphony’s music director Carolyn Kuan. The company’s annual performances at the Stamford Palace on Dec. 20 and 21 will continue to feature a prerecorded score.
The party scene from a previous year’s presentation of Connecticut Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” at The Bushnell. This year, the dancers will be accompanied by a live orchestra. (Thomas Giroir)
According to Connecticut Ballet founder and artistic director Brett Raphael, the company’s “Nutcracker” hasn’t had a live musical accompaniment in over 15 years. The production is essentially the same one Connecticut Ballet has been doing at The Bushnell for years, and will still be using the theater’s smaller Belding Theater space, but it will have the added excitement of a symphony orchestra.
The Hartford “Nutcracker” performances by Connecticut Ballet will feature professional dancers from major ballet companies. On Dec. 20 at 2 and 6 p.m., the guest artists will be Emma Von Enck and Anthony Huxley from New York City Ballet. On Dec. 21 at 1 and 5 p.m., it will be Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside. The guest artists at the Stamford Palace will be New York City Ballet’s Indiana Woodward and Jovani Furlan on Dec. 13 at 2 and 6 p.m. and Philadelphia Ballet’s Oksana Maslova and Jack Thomas on Dec. 14 at 1 and 5 p.m. Each pair of dancers are playing the roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Her Cavalier, who perform a key dance during Clara and the Nutcracker’s tour of the Land of Sweets.
“Nutcracker” season usually kicks off the week after Thanksgiving and peaks in mid-December. In any given year, there are at least 20 separate productions happening around the state. Among the many happenings this year are:
- Nutmeg Ballet, whose “Nutcracker” precedes Connecticut Ballet’s at The Bushnell on Nov. 29 and 30 then plays the Warner Theatre in Torrington on Dec. 13 and 14.
- The University of Hartford’s Hartt School production, now in its 11th year, on Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the school’s Millard Auditorium.
- Danbury Music Centre, who’s been staging “The Nutcracker” for around half a century, on Dec. 12-14 at Danbury High School.
- New Haven Ballet at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven Dec. 12-14.
- The Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance at Ridgefield Playhouse Dec. 12-14.
- Fisher Ballet Productions at Cheney Hall in Manchester on Dec. 13 and 14.
- Connecticut Dance School at Fairfield University’s Quick Center on Dec. 13 and 14.
- Eastern Connecticut Ballet at the Garde Arts Center in New London on Dec. 13 and 14.
- “The Nutcracker Suite & Spicy” a brash modern take on the classic, conceived and directed by Carolyn Paine and presented by Connetic Dance at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford Dec. 19-21.
- Brass City Ballet at the Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center in Waterbury on Dec. 20 at 1 and 5 p.m.
- Main Street Ballet at Pomperaug Regional High School in Southbury on Dec. 20 at 4 p.m.
The snowball sequence from CONNetic Dance’s modern take on Tchaikovsky, “Nutcracker Suite & Spicy,” scored with hip-hop and jazz renditions of the score. The show returns to the theater at The Wadsworth Dec. 19-21. (Bill Morgan)
Amid all this “Nutcracker” frolicking in Connecticut, one young Connecticut dancer, New Canaan 7th grader Eleanor Murphy, finds herself playing the lead role of Marie in the world-class New York City Ballet rendition of the classic, performed Nov. 28 through Jan. 3 at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Who’s Marie? It’s the same character we know as Clara in other “Nutcracker” performances. The Marie name comes from the original short story version of “The Nutcracker” by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Titled “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” Hoffmann wrote it in 1816. Nearly 30 years later, Alexandre Dumas — the writer who gave us “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo — published an adaptation of Hoffmann’s story which maintained the Marie name and Clara is the name of Marie’s cherished doll. When the Dumas story was adapted for the ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa, the young protagonist became Clara. Other versions, which have gone back to the original Hoffmann story and even some using the Tchaikovsky score, use the Marie name.
“The Nutcracker,” in the 1892 ballet form created by Tchaikovsky and Petipa, has two acts. In the first, Clara (or Marie) receives a special gift on Christmas Eve: A nutcracker who looks like a soldier. At night when everyone has gone to bed, the nutcracker springs to life and engages in a battle with angry mice. In the second act, the nutcracker and Clara visit an enchanted land where candies dance for them.
There’s one other vision of Clara and her nutcracker friend worth mentioning. TheaterWorks Hartford’s own annual holiday show, “Christmas on the Rocks,” shows a middle-aged, still agile and acrobat Clara drinking vodka in a bar and lamenting her relationship with the nutcracker soldier who has never aged and doesn’t understand her. The one-act has been a mainstay of “Christmas on the Rocks” for the ever-changing anthology show’s entire 13-year history. The scene’s title? “Still Nuts About Him.”