Nutcracker a real present

"On with the dance," Mark Twain once said, "let joy be unconfined." While he likely was not talking about the St. Petersburg born Nutcracker, the amount of seasonal joy piled onto the traditional Nutcracker is incontestable. Consider that the original Nutcracker premiered in 1882, at least twenty years before Twain's death. But, with the benefits of old age also come certain pitfalls. Since people will buy tickets to the Nutcracker on name alone, often the overall quality of the production suffers. Cynical Scrooges have been known to call this graceful merriment the partridge in a pear tree clich?© of the Christmas season.

Thankfully, though they are now in their 40th anniversary season, the Boston Ballet lives up to no such fickle expectations. Their Nutcracker is fresh, daring, and creates a genuinely heartfelt atmosphere that blends fantasy with reality both on and off stage.

As the first orchestral chord is plucked, the journey to dreamland begins. At once, the previously stationary curtain begins to shimmer and sway, signaling a departure from the daily mundane and an entry into nothing short of the extraordinary.

For those unfamiliar with the actual plot of The Nutcracker, the story follows young Clara Silberhaus' Christmas Eve adventures. The ballet begins at Clara's house where her family is in the midst of throwing an extravagant holiday party. The real excitement doesn't begin until her magician godfather, Drosselmeyer, appears. He makes a grand entrance and brings many a trick up his sleeve, including one charming nutcracker in the form of a toy soldier.

Clara proceeds to falls asleep under the tree, her childish mind transforming her godfather's mild skills of trickery to full-fledged magic. With these powers, he casts a spell on her toy nutcracker, morphing him into a life-sized fighting force. From the moment the young girl closes her eyes, the stage becomes an international free for all. Characters from all across the globe appear as part of Clara's dream, including those from the often neglected land of the imagination.

One of the greatest qualities intrinsic to dance productions is that a director can take the time to tell his story gradually. Unlike in theater, artistic tangents are welcomed instead of seen as pretentious; no one is going to tell Pavel Gurevich (Cavalier) with his gift for flight that he can't perform another Cabriole jump.

A delightful consequence of this lack of restriction is that it gives the audience the ability to imagine endlessly. Is the Sugar Plum Fairy madly in love with the Cavalier? Are the Rats hearty fighters? From a layman's eye, each step is left for each individual audience member's own eye to interpret -- which is, of course, half the fun.

However, beyond the lively dance performances, especially that of the evening's mystic Drosselmeyer, Gianni Di Marco (dancers rotate per night), it is the stunning visuals that draw the most awe. In the first act, various colored screens allow for sets ranging from a frosted town to Clara's Christmas tree-filled living room to an enchanted forest complete with falling snow. The act concludes as Clara and her now full size nutcracker exit the stage in a hot air balloon.

The elaborate costumes also further the fantastical world of the ballet. Clara's simple white nightgown lends to her whimsicalness, making her movements especially smooth and delicate. Drosselmeyer's bright plum cape seems to actually give him the ability to propel himself into the air as he flies above the stage. The second act included visits from dancers from all part of the world, ranging from Spain and Russia to even the fabled lands of Arabia. With flashy red designs for the Spaniards, czar-inspired Russian outfits, and gold pants reminiscent of Aladdin for the Arabic dancers, the costumes continually outdid themselves.

But unlike most traditional Nutcracker productions, the Boston Ballet does not treat the show like it is some historic valuable that needs to be kept away from the sticky (perhaps candy cane holding) fingers of its patrons. A significant amount of action takes place off stage within arms length of the audience. Dancers dressed in the finest 19th century garb mingle with the audience in the aisles, thus making the world of The Nutcracker extend beyond its natural theatrical boundaries.

It is this concern for its patrons, ranging from the tickled grandmother to the teetering tot, which makes this particular production so incredibly dear. This particular ballet was beloved by its audience before the curtain was even raised. The fact that the Boston Ballet used its entire cast and crew in order to create an original Nutcracker for its viewers by show's end demonstrates pure ingenuity.