By Michael D. Wyly - December, 2007
It’s Nutcracker season again and the arts sections of New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times – all the big ones – are already rife with reviews and releases about the choices offered – especially much ballyhoo about George Balanchine’s version now staged by Peter Martins at Lincoln Center. Television’s Ovation Channel this year is doing a 4-day run entitled “Battle of the Nutcrackers” featuring four different versions of the ballet by top choreographers and inviting viewers to vote for the best. The TV series begins, Sunday, December 2nd at 8 P.M. and will continue with several re-runs through December 19th.
Andrei Bossov – who asserts that ballet must be seen live to be appreciated as the human art form that it is - will stage his own again this year at the Waterville Opera House and no one should doubt that it is a fifth contender, right up there with the four featured on Ovation by New York City Ballet (“the Balanchine Nutcracker”), Moscow’s Bolshoi (“the Russian Nutcracker”), Mark Morris Dance Group (“the modern Nutcracker” , and Michael Bourne’s British New Adventures performing at Sadlers-Wells in London “the Victorian Nutcracker”. All use the same Tchaikovsky score, first aired in Andrei’s hometown, St. Petersburg, in 1892.
Maine’s own Andrei Bossov was no less recognized as a choreographer than was George Balanchine before he made his exit from Russia and both men were trained and recognized as choreographers of huge potential by the same school in St. Petersburg.
The Bossov Nutcracker boasts its own uniqueness.
Consider Andrei’s snow scene. All have snow scenes but not like Andrei’s snow scene. No artificial snow allowed in his because the snowstorm is a human storm and the ballerinas become the snow itself like in no other ballet, darting in from the wings and disappearing again as the tiny new fallen flakes we see that tell us “We’re going to get snow today – watch!” They tease us and just as we are soothed with the soft and powdery beauty, on stage thunders the whole Corps de Ballet, white-clad ballerina snowflakes twirling in every direction, swelling to a blizzard that clearly is going to last. Prince and Princess are caught up in it, pursued by the evil mouse king whom the ballerina snowflakes conspire to make him lose the track and, lost himself now, to disappear in the heaping drifts while Prince and Princess, braving the elements make their escape.
There is the battle of the mice vs. the soldiers, a consistent feature of every Nutcracker. But Andrei’s mice are not little rodents crawling out of the wainscot, danced by children, as in other Nutcrackers. Andrei’s mice are the disciplinarian adults we met earlier at the Christmas party who, in a little girls’ dream after the party, grow grotesque rodent-like heads (papier-mâché masks sculpted on bicycle helmets by a costuming genius) to do battle with the army of toy soldiers come alive. The rapid ebb and flow of the battle is so effectively choreographed that no matter how often the scene has been danced, now over a century, one can’t but feel himself wondering which side will win, which side will lose.
The battle, the snow scene, and all of Act 2, including solos, pas de deux, and virtuoso dancing of sugar plums, chocolates, and beautiful flowers, are figments of the little girl’s dream. What Andrei, master story-teller through dance, does so skillfully, is connect it all together with a subtle yet traceable thread. By the time our child protagonist, Marie, falls asleep by the Christmas tree, we have seen implanted in her mind each element of what will be her dream: the gift of the Nutcracker Doll, its fearsome homeliness hiding the fetching wonder that only Marie perceives; the characters of the puppet show at the party; the formidability of the adults soon-to-be rodent warriors; the toys that will come alive in the dream-battle; and last of all before sleep, a frightening encounter with a real mouse in the living room. All reappear in the girl’s head as she sleeps, to make Andrei Bossov’s Nutcracker not just the wonderful story for children that it is, but a major ballet event worthy of real connoisseurs of dance.
The great George Balanchine delighted to appear on stage himself as the mysterious magician-like Uncle Drosselmeier. Nobody but nobody, however, past or present, ever has or ever can, portray Drosselmeier as Andrei can and will when his Bossov Ballet Theatre presents his Nutcracker at the Waterville Opera House Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, December 14th through 16th, evening shows 7:00 PM Friday and Saturday, matinees at 2:00 PM Saturday and Sunday. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office, 873-7000.
Copyright Bossov Ballet 2007 Back to Reviews
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