New England Ballet Theatre: The Nutcracker Review – A Christmas Favorite Presenting Magic in Miniature | Dance

TThe Nutcracker screams Christmas. For major ballet companies, this is usually their biggest show of the year, with huge companies and lavish sets, all the stops pulled out. So how do you make The Nutcracker for a small company like New English Ballet Theatre, with a dozen dancers? NEBT is a wonderful outfit. Director Karen Pilkington-Mixa is constantly commissioning new choreography, in this case from the Royal Ballet’s prima donna Valentino Zucchetti, whose work has been seen on the Royal Opera House stage and elsewhere.

Now, this is not the Royal Opera House. In an intimate venue like this, you don’t get the instant magic and suspension of disbelief that a big stage brings, just real people dancing in front of you. Ballet, like The Nutcracker, needs magic because it is a confection, and the main function of dance is to embellish Tchaikovsky’s wonderful score (here in a recorded version).

Contemporary Zucchetti setting: Christmas party in Clara’s luxurious home. The background shows floor-to-ceiling windows, with children at the party performing as the man runs among them Small allegro. There’s a nice central conceit, that Drosselmeyer’s character is a hypnotist, swinging his pocket watch, and dazzling the guests with dancing, or that Clara dreams of a battle between soldiers and pirates (instead of mice) and sets out for the Land of Snows. It all needs more personality to really stand out: more energy in the characters, more enthusiasm in the fight scene. You should be less polite.

With a small cast, Zucchetti has to get creative. He creates a balance between flow and palette, placing the ten snowflakes in ever-changing formations, giving overall shape to Clara’s choreography in her “Pas de deux” (with Luca di Poli’s Nutcracker). Klara is the guest dancer of Lyudmila Konovalova, long-time director of the Vienna State Ballet. Her years of experience are evident, everything is masterfully danced, and never a stitch drops.

The hard-working young actors dance well (Marcos Silva has soul and technical force; Audrey Nelson is the bright, sparkling queen of flowers). They are so loved and there is so much to enjoy. You have to take this production as it is – a small company like this cannot compete with the big companies. They could inject more energy into the first act, but what they do, they do well. Somewhere in the middle of the multiple turns, I started to feel like I was celebrating Christmas.