Return of the Mouse King
PA Ballet gives The Nutcracker a face-lift.
; "NEW TUTU: Julie Diana and James Ady in new costumes by Judanna Lynn.")
NEW TUTU: Julie Diana and James Ady in new costumes by Judanna Lynn. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION) |
It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas past. Pennsylvania Ballet's Nutcracker production just wasn't so spectacular anymore. Back in 1987, the company paid a million bucks to stage Balanchine's three-act version, replacing a hodgepodge of PAB Nutcrackers going back to 1968. Ten years later, the glamour was gone.
Artistic director Roy Kaiser said the show was "long overdue" for this year's extreme makeover, which added new costumes and sets to spruce up the beloved holiday classic.
Across the city in a number of local ballet schools, 40 young ballet students are practicing for their roles, rehearsing everything from the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux to Mouse King's battle with the Nutcracker. Meanwhile, the PAB pros are filling every one of their temporary rehearsal studios at Sherman Mills in East Falls with dancers practicing character dances and large corps sequences.
I stop by on a day when repetiteur Sandra Jennings is rehearsing the dancers who will perform the Waltz of the Flowers. She has spent 15 minutes just working on the entrance. She looks closely at the steps, the carriage of the arms, the set of the head. It all has to be just so. Around the studio other dancers stand, quietly mimicking the steps with their hands or bodies so that they can be ready for their turn to perform.
As a repetiteur representing the George Balanchine Trust (as well as a former PAB ballet mistress and New York City ballet dancer), Jennings' job is to ensure the steps and standards of Balanchine's choreography are maintained exactly as the master created them.
"I have a very weird memory," Jennings says, "which comes from my New York City Ballet days. Working with Balanchine and Robbins made you care about every step and think about what you were doing."
Plus, she adds, "I take very good notes." She displays a yellow legal pad with dancers' names written in diagonal lines and crisscross patterns, and endless pages of small notations about each dancer and every step.
At the same time, some meticulous behind-the-scenes work is taking place. The new production — which carries an $850,000 price tag — calls for 192 ballet costumes and new sets for all three acts. Substantial support came from the William Penn Foundation and board members Christa and Calvin Schmidt. Many of the costumes were underwritten by board members, loyal patrons and families of some of the children in the production.
Kaiser picked major designers: Brit Peter Horne for sets, upstate New Yorker Michael Hagan for set construction and Manhattanite Judanna Lynn for costumes. This was just another day job for this dream team that has worked on other Nutcrackers, including productions in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Up near Lake George in New York, Hagan and his assistants used long-handled brushes to paint huge backdrops spread across the floor of his studio space. The drops are made of cotton and canvas, and some of heavy netlike fabric. The sets were painted from designs submitted by Horne. "I have worked with Peter many times," Hagan says, "and I know what his stuff looks like and what he expects." The only Nutcracker staging that remains untouched is the $62,000 hydraulic Christmas tree, which was introduced in 2001.
Lynn's costumes were made in London and then flown to Philadelphia for an in-house seamstresses to nip and tuck. Each of these is an individual work of art, composed of gorgeous fabrics, fabulously detailed, dripping with lace and embroidery. With so many textures and colors creatively layered and juxtaposed, they look like they belong in the Art Museum's new Costume Gallery.
Will the audience notice these exquisite touches?
"The audience does see the details," Lynn insists, "it's just that they don't know they see them. The costumes are like an Impressionist painting where from a distance you see the beautiful whole but you have to go up close to see all the tiny spots of color that created the effect."
"The very nature of The Nutcracker calls for attention to detail," Lynn continues. "Think of the grandeur of the Tchaikovsky score, and all the busy details of the holiday season. It just wouldn't do to have the Sugar Plum Fairy come out with a plain pink net and satin tutu. ... Costumes like these give the dancers a lift."
The Nutcracker, Dec. 14-31, $48.50-$129, Academy of Music, Broad and Spruce streets, 215-893-1999, paballet.org.
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