Finally, says Darcey Bussell, and smiles her ballerinas smile: For almost two years it was not possible to dance the “Nutcracker”, and now finally!
England's most beautiful former ballerina hosted the evening of the live broadcast of the ballet from London's Covent Garden in more than seven hundred cinemas worldwide. She herself has spent more than half her life on stage with the royal velvet curtain, and through dozen of nutcracker performances throughout the Christmas season, year after year, she has grown from one role to the next, like generations of dancers with their audience for nearly one hundred and thirty years.
First ballerinas dance the childish, little Clara, who gets the wonderful nutcracker under the Christmas tree from her uncle Drosselmeyer. In Peter Wright's Royal Ballet version of the Tchaikovsky Ballet, which was premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1892 according to the ideas of Marius Petipa and in the choreography of Lev Ivanov, the girl dreams of herself older on Christmas Eve - she is no longer a child . She joined the nutcracker in his fight against the lion-headed mouse king - who would have thought that he would be knocked out with a pointe shoe - and so her bravery and affection have given Drosselmeyer's young nephew, trapped in a wooden body, back the human form.
The two lucky ones drive away in a sleigh, through a winterly snow-covered forest, in which the snowflakes are dancing waltzes, to the realm of sweets. Here in the second act the Sugar Fairy appears with a shimmering golden shine, and that is the most regal, most difficult, female role in the Nutcracker - an epitome of classical dance full of majestic arabesques, sovereign pirouettes and breathtaking lifts. By choosing ETA Hoffmann's story "Nutcracker and Mouse King", Petipa's idea was to contrast the familiar, festive atmosphere of Christmas Eve with the uncanny in a romantic tradition and then to overcome these opposites in the second act, in a kind of apotheosis of classical dance.
The Nutcracker is also the most popular of the three classic Tchaikovsky ballets because all generations come together here to dance on an occasion that is as real as it is fantastic - Christmas Eve. The ballet children grow into the excitement of the stage dance, old dancers play the grandfathers and aunts, and they all have only one goal: to make the audience, regardless of age, feel like they are watching Christmas through the eyes of a child again be able. This also works quite well in the cinema, even if not as well as usual.
The joy that in the fully occupied Covent Garden the English are sitting with their woolen coats on their laps as always, as if it were really nothing special and certainly no reason to dress up, is there, but subdued; The impartiality and carefree pre-Christmas time are missing for another year. Festive anticipation felt far more overwhelming at one point. When a "Nutcracker" production is great, the experience is stunning. That didn't quite happen that evening at the cinema. The ballet simply cannot compete with the depressing pandemic situation. Perhaps it is also due to this version of Peter Wright, where the set and the costumes can easily give the impression that you are watching a DVD from the 1984 premiere - too many hoods, too heavy long skirts, too pale colors,too much "The House on Eaton Place" if it had to look like "Downton Abbey". Darcey Bussell smiles bravely at everything, as if she wants to say what she is not allowed to say: hold on! Tell the child in you that it has to persevere. The pandemic is coming to an end, there will be a new nutcracker at some point, a brighter, deeper, fresher one, and everything will be as it should be again.