Some holiday traditions reassuringly retain their values: in Rochester The
Nutcracker remains a pleasure and an artistic highlight and keeps getting better.
Artistic director Jamey Leverett reports that the 18-year-old Rochester City
Ballet is dancing at its best to date, and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra
reportedly sounds splendid in its 82nd season, playing in the elaborately
renovated Eastman Theatre.
This year’s Nutcracker is a topper and a last chance.
Presented by Time Warner Cable, it’s the largest ever, with 160 local community
children participating, and RCB’s largest cast — 247 performers! But we can
see this much-loved version with its magical Christmas Spirit literally flying
overhead one more time, because a completely new Nutcracker is in the works for next year.
That’s 247 onstage, by the way. Offstage, Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous score will be
played by the RPO, conducted by Michael Butterman; and next to the orchestra
the Bach Children’s Chorus, directed by Karla Krogstad, will add musical
magic to the Snow Scene. It all adds up to one of the grandest artistic events
of the year.
Rochester’s is an impressive example, but many American
cities celebrate the season with Nutcrackers. Oddly,
although the work is Russian in origin and based on a German fairy tale, this
is truly an American phenomenon. England and some other countries have begun to
copy our Christmas tradition, but it started here.
I’ve seen several Nutcrackers in Russia, performed in
spring and summer. But it’s a perfect winter holiday show, since the ballet
begins with a Christmas party that grows into a fantasy about dolls coming to
life and children transported to magical kingdoms of snowy beauty and dancing
flowers, sweets, and gifts.
Guest stars dancing with our
company include Sarah Lane and Karen Uphoff from American Ballet Theatre,
alternating in the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Lane, an alumna of the company
and school, has local fans. She will dance on Saturday evening and in both
Sunday performances, partnered by ABT danseur Danny Tidwell. Another young ABT
virtuoso, Bo Busby, will be Uphoff’s Cavalier. RCB company member Sari Ostrum,
who has returned from dancing with ABT, will dance the Dewdrop Fairy.
Two exciting dancers, Jim
Nowakowski and Tetsushi Segawa, have bravura solo roles. Nowakowski, now 15,
will probably move on after this year from his remarkably vivacious “Fritz,”
the feisty young son of the party-hosting family. He’ll also dance the showy
Russian Trepak.
Segawa, currently with the parody
ballet company Grandivas, leads the Chinese dance; and Leverett has reworked the
dance of the Harlequins as a solo for him. Company balletmaster Brian Norris,
who discovered Segawa while guesting with Grandivas, will return in the role of
the mysterious Drosselmeyer.
Rochester City Ballet is the best ballet company in western
New York State (see news and schedules at www.rcb.org).
Founded by the late Timothy M. Draper, the company and its school have
developed dancers now employed by major US and European ballet companies. For
instance, with ABT in New York, Sarah Lane and Kristi Boone, another former RCB
ballerina, recently danced the principal roles in Christopher Wheeldon’s new
ballet VIII, both of them winning
kudos in The New York Times‘ review.
Jamey Leverett has contributed to
the more than 20 ballets developed by RCB. In April her work of tribute to
Draper, Pedestal, will be performed
by company members at the French Institute’s Florence Gould Hall in New York
City; it was chosen for the Ballet Builders Showcase there. This coming spring
will bring a revival in Rochester of RCB’s full-length ballet, Cinderella.
The Nutcracker, music by Peter I. Tchaikovsky, choreography by
Timothy M. Draper and Jamey Leverett after Petipa. The Rochester City Ballet and the Rochester
Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Michael Butterman at Eastman Theatre,
26 Gibbs Street, Friday, November 26, through Sunday, November 28, at 2 pm and
7 pm. Tickets $22 to $52, discounts with Wegmans Shoppers Card. www.rpo.org,454-2100.
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2004.
