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Flash Review 1, 1-3: S.F. Ballet's Snow Job
Even Zahorian's Daring Snow Queen Can't Save this Cracked 'Nut'

By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2000 The Dance Insider

SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the unexpected gifts of a trip home for the holidays is that a childhood memory may be recovered that explains everything. "Aha!" you exclaim, "THAT's why I'm always hungry!" Well, my holiday excavation to my City by the Bay did, in fact, produce an explanation for the bottomless pit that is my pancreas. I can't say more than that about that particular epiphany without incriminating the innocent or inundating you with TMI (too much information). However, my trip to the War Memorial Opera House, where San Francisco Ballet this season trotted out a "Nutcracker" production parts of which are nearly as old as that septuagenarian theater, did illuminate for me why the San Francisco flower child that was me didn't fall in love with dance soon enough to try his feet at it. And this epiphany I will explain, as the only ones incriminated are the guilty -- those guilty of bilking parents, selling kids short, and utterly wasting a substantial portion of some of the most beautiful music in the ballet world, not to mention squandering a great deal of holiday good will.

I was thirty years old when I fell in love with ballet, after seeing, first, Tina LeBlanc in the Joffrey Ballet's production of John Cranko's "Romeo & Juliet," as well as the Joffrey's revival of Nijinsky's "Rite of Spring"; and, second, Evelyn Cisneros in, on back-to-back nights, "Swan Lake" and Redha's "Pavane Rouge," both on San Francisco Ballet. In subsequent years the only regret with which this newfound love was tinged was that I had not discovered it earlier -- about twenty years earlier, when I was ten and, theoretically at least, could have tried out for the San Francisco Ballet School and, who knows, been a contendah instead of just a wannabe critic on the sidelines.

However, to take this step, I would have needed some spur to my interest -- say, a moving experience at the ballet for ten-year-old me that made me want to get up there and join the party. But that was 1971, when I was ten, and it was also when San Francisco Ballet was at the end of a somewhat fallow, post-Nancy Johnson, pre-Michael Smuin, Evelyn Cisneros, Helgi Tomasson period. My parents did, in fact, take me to the ballet at some point in the sixties or early seventies -- in fact, to see this same production! (I.e., the one originally choreographed by Lew Christensen in 1944, with additional choreography added by brother Willam; Tomasson would add staging in 1986.) All I can remember is not understanding a thing about the plot, and being especially confused as to why man-sized mice were fighting wooden soldiers.

Strangely, I had no memory of the entire first act -- you know, the one where, theoretically, the children are front and center. I do remember that when I first saw George Balanchine's version, in 1995 on City Ballet, I was delighted that he actually gave the children complex choreographic patterns to execute. As a sometimes children's drama teacher, I was aware that kids can do more than just stand on stage and be cute. Well, on December 22 at the War Memorial, I simultaneously realized why Balanchine's "Nutcracker" so impressed me, and recovered my memory of why the childhood me had seen nothing in S.F. Ballet's "Nutcracker" to hook him and make him want to enlist. At least as far as the children in the first act are concerned, this "Nutcracker" has no choreography!

What we're talking here is kids (or pre-teens) basically standing on stage looking cute, with the most intricate movement consisting of stereotypical play-acting and simplistic circles, and the most bravura phrases calling on them to wave their stuffed animals in the air. In Balanchine's "Nutcracker," when Herr Drosselmeier unveils the toy soldier, the children, aligned on either side of him, react to the soldier's salvoes, falling down and kicking their legs up. In SFB's, they just watch. Also in Balanchine's, the magical tone for the entire evening is set when a scrim rises, all the lights except those decorating the Christmas are dimmed, and the children, raising their arms in the air as if in a trance, pay homage to the tree as if it were the god of Christmas.

Did I say tree? In SFB's tired production, this tree has got to be the tiredest element. It looks fake. When it rises out of the ground -- the part where the tree grows larger and larger, setting in motion the fantastic events to follow -- this evergreen wobbles precariously on its strings, which are clearly visible.

Did I say fantastic? Ah, there's the rub. One, if not THE, enabling element of the end of the first and of the entire second act -- i.e., that makes it all seem plausible, even for adults - is the possibility that this could all be a dream. It's not just that Clara (Marie in Balanchine's version) falls asleep before her world is rocked and enlarged and she is transported to the Land of the Sweets. It's also that, in classic dream fashion, Drosselmeier's actions, post her falling asleep, are suggested by seemingly inconsequential images in the first act. For example, in Balanchine's "Nutcracker," the image of the mad Drosselmeier straddling the grandfather clock is suggested by an earlier moment where he points out the discrepancy between the time it's showing, and that on his own watch.

In Balanchine's version, the possibility is left open that all this could be a dream, imagined by the highly suggestible child. However, in SFB's production, at the end of the party scene, before this dream sets in, Jim Sohm's Drosselmeyer, before exiting, very obviously, in full view of the very obviously puzzled parents, rubs his hands together as if to say, "Now, my Pretty, all is set for my diabolical plan!" Ya ha ha!

While I wouldn't go so far as to call the Christensens' choreography for the Land of the Sweets diabolical, it is decidedly dreary. They and Tomasson have somehow managed the feat of evading the musicality of one of the most obviously musical scores in the ballet canon! Only in the most general sense does the choreography have any relation to Tchaikovsky's magnificent, opulent, sumptuous score.

Fortunately, on the evening this "Nutcracker" caught me, a cavalry of sorts did arrive in the second act, in the persons of Julie Diana, Vanessa Zahorian, Leslie Young, and a spirited corps of snowflakes.

Let's start with the Snowflakes and, to be fair, lets bring in a comparison again to City Ballet. In this case, I'm happy to report that, unlike most of the Snowflakes that didn't catch me November 29 at the New York State Theater, these Snowflakes seemed generally happy to be there. Of course, this should be the norm, but it wasn't at the State, where the Snowflakes seemed almost pained to have to be up on stage - another day at the office.

And then I saw something truly abnormal -- in a good way, I mean! Zahorian, the latest talk of the town among the SFB women, displayed uncanny precariousness -- in a good way! -- as the Queen of the Snow, dancing with Gonzalo Garcia's capable King. What makes ballet live is not when the positions are executed with perfection, but with daring. Zahorian impressed in two achievements here: First, she waited until the last possible moment -- when it seemed she might fall, so steep was her angle -- to come off pointe. This is what I like to call good teetering -- teetering that comes not from unconfidence, but from the ballerina's utter confidence that she can right herself at the last moment. This, however, while rare, was something I'd seen before. What I'd never seen, however, was the way Zahorian teetered -- good teetering -- as Garcia held her in her pirouettes. Imagine a hand-held, old-fashioned dreidel that spins, that even veers wildly from side to side, that appears ready to topple off its point at any second -- but that never does, until it's good and ready. Let's call this good imbalance, or finding balance in what for anyone else would be an unbalanced position.

While not quite so startling, Julie Diana, as Sugar Plum, was definitely sunny - good sunny, and more naturally sunny than Miranda Weese's plastic-y (bad plastic-y) Sugar Plum in the City Ballet performance I caught. Unlike Weese, who appeared to be dancing by rote, stingily not fully realizing the inherent joy in the music, and indeed of just being on stage, Diana, even working with this very old, endlessly played score, seemed to be discovering anew, with generous and genuine relish, each strain of the music. I loved the way that she entered into it, and into its spirit.

Regal, as always, was Leslie Young, as Butterfly.

And just now, I seem to be recovering another memory. As someone who has coasted from coast to coast for the past nigh-on twenty years, I've often wished I could build a life with the best aspects of both: Say, the stimulation of New York with the weather of San Francisco (60 degrees in the shade during some days of my visit; the barometer dipping to 50 was cause for my stepmother exclaiming, "It's really cold today!" Boo-hoo!).

Seeing these two Nutcrackers, coast-to-coast, I find myself making this impossible wish: for a George Balanchine "Nutcracker," with San Francisco Ballet dancers. (Oh, all right, Monique Meunier and Wendy Whelan can stay!) And one more wish: That my hometown will get a new "Nutcracker" by next year, with actually choreography for the kids, so that a future 10-year-old PBI in the audience might be entranced enough to actually want to try to become a ballet dancer, and so that the parents of those San Francisco Ballet School children in this production might get a chance not just to see their kids on stage, but see what their kids can do on stage. One touch SFB has added in recent years is snow-like bubbles which, I kid you not, float down on the pre-show crowd in front of the opera house. As it is, that's exactly what these parents are getting: a snow job.

(For more on New York City Ballet's "Nutcracker," see Tara Zahra's review of today, and my review of this year's opening night performance.)

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