I decided after dinner to watch the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. After finteen minutes I decided my attention span wasn't strong enough tonight so I switched to the new DVD of the Royal Ballet production of NUTCRACKER. I wanted to like it but nearly everything going on put me out of joint. When it was over, I put on the film version of the New York City Ballet production and watched Act One. It reconfirmed my opinion that Balanchine is my favorite ballet choreographer and Jerome Robbns right behind him.
I first saw the City Ballet production in December 1966, and its magic, wonder and perfection are compromised in the film - some things should only be seen pn a proscenium stage - and the things I dislike most in the film version are McCaulay Culkin, who's no dancer and out of character, and Kevin Kline's narration which is unnecessary. The director often cuts from the dances to reactions and that's a pain. Now I want to see NUTCRACKER at Lincoln Center again.
Balanchine's staging is amazing to me, for three reasons: his choreography fits the music so amazingly well, his direction of the cast, especially the parents, grandparents and children in the party is glorious, from little touches like the grandfather dozing during the party, the toast to the grandparents, the children's reactions to the dancing toys of Drosselmeyer, and the wonderful development of the spoiled brat little brother Fritz. The third reason it works so well is that he catches the diluted spirit of E.T.A. Hopffmann, author of the original story {Nutcracker and Mouse King[/i], whose stories seem to find the horror lurking under the Biedermeier coziness of middleclass German life of the early 19th Century. Hoffmann's story for children is not the gothic horror of stories like "The Sandman" or "The Forest Warden" but it does have a lot of real?/fantasy? aspects that the ballet scenario dilutes. Balanchine isn't afraid to get spooky or to develop haunting stage pictures. I hadn't seen the ballet between 1966 and 1985, when I saw it for the first time after I moved to New York, but what I remembered from that 1966 production was the wonderful sequence after the Mouse King is killed when the doll's bed carrying little Marie, who's fainted after saving the Nutcracker from the Mouse Kong, drifted out the window into a forest of falling snow. It was the most beautiful image, accompanied by some of Tchaikovsky's most beautiful music, of a child falling deeper into fantastic dream. It was stunning and final scene of the first act, a blizzard accompanied by dancing snowflakes and a boys' chorus imitating the wind, is one of Balanchine's most glorious moments. Pure magic.
Time to watch Anderson and Kathy Griffin raise hell!
