Magic and Beauty of a Hundred Years
Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker makes your Christmas dreams come alive
TU-LAN VU-HAN — The Tech
The Nutcracker
Choreographed by Mikko Nissinen
Boston Opera House
Nov. 24 – Dec. 31
The Christmas tree grows right in front of your eyes. First, it’s six feet, then 12, and then 40 by the time you blink next. The enormity of this seems a bit intimidating at the beginning, but then you remember the last time you looked up at a Christmas tree that’s that much bigger than you. And just by this simple stagecraft sleight, you are transferred into a sweet Christmas memory that you haven’t revisited in almost a lifetime.
This is the simple promise of Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker — it promises to evoke, if not emulate, your sweetest dreams of Christmas and, in the process, fills you with the innocent anticipation for the holidays. Through a vivacious performance of the ballet company’s principals and the youngsters from their ballet school, along with a breathtaking feat in stagecraft by Robert Perdziola, the performance is quite a tour in the dreamland.
Even though Nutcracker is an age-old ballet, Boston Ballet managed to put a novel flavor to it by innovating much with the props and the set. The costumes glittering under the spotlights, the rapidly changing, unexpectedly deep stage and the lighting changes with each of the exotic dances all show how exquisitely the whole thing was planned. The vast swath of available roles also lets the dance bring out the best in the performers. It’s as if the whole company got to create to the maximum of their capacity. What they created together makes the whole larger than the sum of the parts by providing an experience you can lose yourself in.
Whether you want a tour down memory lane, or if it’s your first time to The Nutcracker, Boston Ballet’s latest show is truly worth it if you enjoy the holiday spirit in its most innocent form.