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A welcome festive visitor
The Nutcracker
Moscow
Ballet -
La Classique
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
****
The Nutcracker as danced by La Classique
Moscow Ballet is like stepping into paradise on earth.
The scene is set with just a simple painted
backcloth of a splendid country house in the snow. The children with
their parents gather to attend the Christmas Eve party and each party
has its own character and story to tell.
One girl slips on the ice and cries, boys throw
snowballs at each other, the parents scold, the children play. And then
the fun starts. The magician godfather brings clockwork toys –
Harlequin, Saracen and Columbine - that he winds up to entertain the
children and the fun continues way into the night.
We follow the overtired and over excited children
back along the same routes home with, again, some gorgeous story
telling. Dad has forgotten his hat! The children clearly don’t want the
fun to end. Clara (Nadejda Ivanova) and Fritz, brother and sister of the
house have been given gifts.
Hers is a huge and colourful soldier nutcracker,
his is a sword. He breaks her nutcracker with some boisterous playing
and she is bereft.
Midnight strikes and the
house mice take the stage, but Clara’s new soldier isn’t so broken that
he can’t defend her. Other toy soldiers join the battle and it is
definitely not a quiet Christmas night.
The magic of midnight turns Clara’s Nutcracket
soldier (Aleksandr Tarasov) into a real man and they dreamily dance the
night away.
The dancing is glorious, Tchaikovsky’s music
wonderful (recorded but that’s fine), characterisation and storytelling
first rate. This was truly an enchanted evening’s entertainment with
something for all the family.
La Classique was founded in 1990 to utilise the
skills, talents and passions of Russia’s finest classical dancers and
aimed to recreate as far as possible the traditional choreography of the
1820s, the heyday of Russian ballet.
I particularly enjoyed the principal dancers in
the cameo sections featuring French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese dance,
all performed with such finesse and humour, but it was the children
setting the scene so cleverly in the snowy winter that stole my heart.
The lighting effects and the magic Christmas Tree all added an air of
mystery and wonder. This is great entertainment and well worth a look.
To 08-11-14
Jane Howard
06-11-14
This production of The
Nutcracker is also at Buxton Opera House on Wednesday, 19th
November
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