Nutcracker in Havana / The Nutcracker
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / London Coliseum December 2024
The Nutcracker is not a hard nut to crack. In 1892, Tchaikovsky gave the world the meat of it, tailoring his delectable score to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s children’s story, and choreographers have been experimenting with that combination ever since.
The Vic-Wells Ballet (later, the Royal Ballet) presented the first complete production outside Russia in 1934. Ten years later, San Francisco Ballet staged the first complete version in the United States, and ten years after that George Balanchine’s production in New York launched the ballet as a holiday tradition.
Eventually, Mark Morris set it in suburban America, Matthew Bourne set it in a Victorian orphanage, Olympic gold medalists performed it on ice, and everything from modern dance, jazz, puppets and roller skates have crept into various interpretations.
However, intrinsic charm and irresistible music don’t necessarily sell The Nutcracker to everyone. Far more attractions pitch for the public’s attention than the public can afford. So when you see two Nutcrackers back to back, as I just have, you quickly notice that the essential difference between them isn’t the choreography.
The director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta also directs Acosta Danza, the troupe he founded in his native Havana in 2015. Powered by his pride and trust in it, his Nutcracker in Havana, that company’s first full-evening production, supplies an ideal vehicle to display his unfamiliar dancers in a setting ballet audiences easily recognize..
The composer Pepe Gavilondo Peón has twisted Cuban rhythms through the score and Acosta has enlivened the action with local customs, such as the stamping dance performed in chancletas, wooden fiip-flops. The rats battle a group of mambises, the soldiers of Cuba’s War of Independence, and Clara travels to the Kingdom of Sweets in her uncle’s Corvette.
Yet the sweet-tempered characters made a stronger impression than these colorful interpolations, because the artists’ natural manner filled the ballet with elegance and engaging warmth. And they danced so well, balanced and confident without straining for effect. Holding their shoulders and arms graciously relaxed, they turned like tops, high on their feet, and jumped like springs, landing silently every time.
Yasiel Hodelín Bello, Clara’s prince, has joined Birmingham Royal Ballet, bringing with him a standard of excellence that may inspire others. You couldn’t miss it even in the dancers with less showy parts, and it left me eager to see all of them again in works that would really challenge them.
Unfortunately, English National Ballet’s brand-new Nutcracker would not be among my choices. In fact, I hardly noticed the performers in it, except for Ivana Bueno as Clara, Francesco Gabriele Frola as her prince, and the children who, for a change, did more than dress the stage.
Choreographed by the company’s director, Aaron S. Watkin, and Arielle Smith, the ballet has been reimagined as an elaborate, glittering stage production decorated with dancing. “We’re competing with West End shows,” Watkin has said. By involving one designer for concept, set and costume designs and three others for lighting, video and illusion designs, he has tried to match the extravagant appeal of the competition.
Only the box-office returns will indicate whether he’s succeeded. To paraphrase an exasperated stagehand in the movie The Band Wagon, this show’s got more scenery than Yellowstone National Park. It’s also got chimney sweeps, suffragettes, projections of skittering mice, and a single dead tree anchoring a pas de deux knee-deep in dry ice.
Dancing never stood a chance. And yet, eight little kids took the stage as Liquorice Allsorts (a favorite candy in Britain) and won every heart, not only by looking cute in their costumes but by taking their responsibility seriously and delivering their short dance without a foot or arm out of place.
Professional performers do that too, all the time, offering us their hard-earned skill and carefully tended artistry. I thought people went to the ballet in anticipation of those offers and to enjoy what they couldn’t see anywhere else.
Nutcracker in Havana tours the U.K. until January 28, 2025. nutcrackerinhavana.com
English National Ballet’s Nutcracker remains at the Coliseum until January 12, 2025. ballet.org.uk/nutcracker Its production of Swan Lake will be broadcast by Sky Arts on Christmas Day. See ballet.org.uk for information.