Abandon any preconceptions of 'The Nutcracker' as traditional, sugary Christmas fare - some new productions bring the darker side of the original story centre stage, writes Christine Madden
Christmas is over; the trees, lights and tinsel have come down. A bit overfed and sodden, we all trudge back to normal life in dead winter, to that bleak, dark and cold place called "the office".
But something doesn't feel quite right, at least in the office conjured up by David Bolger, choreographer and artistic director of CoisCéim Dance Company. Something Christmassy is still at play in his workplace. Just as we're breaking the last of our overly-optimistic New Year's resolutions, he's got Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in production between the desks.
But before you groan at the prospect of another, belated Nutcracker and the vision of white tulle snowflakes spinning past the photocopier, drop your preconceptions of the sugary Christmas time staple. Bolger's contemporary dance version harks back to the story's origins, which were far murkier than the sweet fable we crowd in to see come December.
In the first half of the 19th century, German author E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote a number of fairy tales, among them one called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Like other examples of his work, including those that inspired the composer Jacques Offenbach to compose the opera Tales of Hoffmann, this story weaves a complex plot devoid of Sugar Plum Fairies and unambiguous happy endings. In The Nutcracker, Hoffmann described the adventures of Marie, who enters a sinister fantasy world on Christmas Eve with the help of a gift from her enigmatic Uncle Drosselmeier.
This phantasm continues, through Marie's innocent imagination, to pull her back and forth between reality and fantasy, to the annoyance of her rational, disbelieving parents, until these worlds merge, fused by her childish ability to see through appearances and to love unconditionally.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the director of the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg, Ivan Alexandrovitch Vsevolojsky, wanted something to follow up on the success of The Sleeping Beauty, and proposed another collaboration by legendary classical choreographer Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
His choice, a ballet based on L'Histoire d'un Casse-Noisette, a cheerier French version of the darker Hoffmann original, did not excite either Petipa's or Tchaikovsky's creative fervour. Both refused the commission at first. On their continued insistence, Petipa then changed the story to accommodate more opportunity for spectacle, but Tchaikovsky, who didn't much like the story in the first place, thought it had become a bit bland. A simultaneous one-act opera commission sweetened the deal, however, and he accepted. As work went on, he went on to prefer his Nutcracker to the opera, Iolanthe - and certainly the former has eclipsed the latter in terms of renown. Petipa became ill as work progressed and was replaced by Lev Ivanov, who had studied with Petipa's father.
Although the finished production apparently pleased Czar Alexander III, it was generally not enthusiastically received when it first opened on December 17th, 1892. With the years, however, The Nutcracker went through various permutations at the hands of various choreographers in experimental productions.
Nicolai Sergeyev launched the first UK production in 1934, and Margot Fonteyn made her first stage appearance with the Vic-Wells Ballet (predecessor of the Royal Ballet) in this English première. Ten years later, the ballet made its debut in the US by the San Francisco Opera Ballet under the guidance of William Christensen, who had conferred with George Balanchine. And a decade after that, Balanchine created his own version for the New York City Ballet, a definitive version that finally clinched the audience for this ballet.
The Nutcracker went on to many notable productions, such as those by Rudolf Nureyev and Mickhail Baryshnikov, and even inspired choreographer Mark Morris to create a contemporary dance production for his own company. Called The Hard Nut, the work, which had its UK premiere at last November's Dance Umbrella in London, takes advantage of the grotesque, quirky nature of the original story and follows it closely. At the same time, it pokes fun at the reverence in which The Nutcracker is held, and has a go at American cultural mythologies of the 1960s, such as the cocktail party.
The stunning black and white stage design sets off the brilliant costumes and dancing, with fresh explosions of snow instead of steadily falling flakes during the snowflake sequence, wilted flowers in formation during the Waltz of the Flowers and Morris himself a drunken reveller at the party. The modern feel of the piece sparks off from Tchaikovsky's timeless music and lends it an interesting depth.
Bolger makes use of Tchaikovsky's beautiful score also, but transplants it to that other iconic setting, the workplace. The CoisCéim version, which opens in Dublin tonight, whittles away some literal aspects of the story to create a parable about the strangulation of childhood dreams and fantasies in the straightjacket of impersonal, petty, hyper-rational office existence.
"It starts on Christmas Eve," Bolger says, "with a large Christmas tree that's an aperture to another world, but that's the only reference to Christmas." The rest of the set is "colourless" - black, white and grey.
The banishment of hopes and dreams, our creative and playful selves, encouraged Bolger to see what happens to a Clara - the usual name for the protagonist in the ballet adaptation - who never got her nutcracker when she was a child. "As adults, we lose that childish nature in ourselves," explains Bolger. "When we go into working life, we have to block things out."
Clara, danced by Lisa McLoughlin, has accomplished this, yet still remains susceptible to the shadowy figure of Drosselmeier, played by Tom Hickey, who tries to nudge her "back to her dream". A well indoctrinated adult, Clara has had enough of fantasies and wishes her office back.
But transformation is inevitable, with a bit of vicious humour along the way. "There's a battle in the office, and the people in the office grow tails and become the rats," Bolger says. "And there's someone in the office who is very bitter and jealous; she becomes the Sugar Plum Fairy."
Hoffmann's obsession with time in the original fairy tale - in which Dosselmeier was a clockmaker - also makes its presence felt in Bolger's version. "When the clock strikes 12, the alarm goes off, then Clara goes into her dream." Here, too, Bolger tries to confuse "fantasy" and "reality". Clara - as well as the "mature" adults in the audience - are bidden to "wake up to your dreams".
No matter how vehemently Clara tries to block out the fantastical nature of her now-threatening childhood world, Drosselmeier brings it back. The story reflects perhaps the reinitiation of the rational office worker into the creative life, and exhorts the audience to recall that moment as teenagers or young adults when they bent to social pressures, abandoned their silly pleasures and sense of joy and became serious.
"As an artist," says Bolger, "you have to play: to play house, play shop. This grey world has its own fantasy and imagination as well. I wanted to see that spring into fantasy, to see something ordinary turn extraordinary."
