A Matter of Trust

Kenneth Greve’s Nutcracker
Royal Danish Ballet
December 5, 2007

Even though the Royal Danish Ballet is financed by the state and therefore not forced to use “The Nutcracker” as a fundraiser, the company and Ballet Master Frank Andersen never the less want to join the international trend of dancing “Nutcracker” in December. The aim of the effort is to reach out to a broader audience.

That aim is probably the main reason why Principal Dancer and future Ballet Master in Helsinki Kenneth Greve is paired with local theatre wizz Peter Langedal. The latter is supposed to give the classic a temporary feel and make it more accessible to a family audience. Langedal is well known in  Denmark for his big scale attack on most national and international classics. Last year he directed a production of “Die Fledermaus” where most of the second act took place in the Men’s Room and his touch is very much felt in scenes like the Flower Waltz where one of the corps is replaced by a monkey and a big (and I mean very Big) yellow rabbit joins the action. The only reason the monkey joke works is because the dancer inside the monkey suite Rebecca Labbé is a very fine dancer with beautiful pirouettes. The over the top rabbit remains an unnecessary addition and make one form the opinion that someone along the line felt that the “Nutcracker” needed more than a bit of pep to appeal to the audience.

 

That is probably the main reason why this production does not succeed. When one feels that a classic need to be changed and induced with a big dose of broad comedy, maybe it should be left alone. One may wonder why the “Nutcracker” has survived so many years and indeed so many bad adaptations. The reason is simple, because the core material works. It is always a good idea to trust in the material and the tradition.

Another major flaw with this production is that it is obvious that Kenneth Greve and Peter Langedal have different wishes for the ballet. For Langedal it is just another venue to conquer and trivialise. For Greve it is a wish to produce and develop classical ballet. The result is a His & His ballet rather than a joint venture.

As a choreographer Greve is choreographing along the line of most classical dancers. Difficult, but not necessarily attractive steps and sequences. In the grand pas de deux he wants to modernise the steps and infuses a variety of new combinations, but it looked forced and has not much dramatic or aesthetic content. He is clearly inspired by most of the other international “Nutcrackers” and he borrows a lot from Flemming Flindts production which survived more than 20 years in repertoire. You can even see some dancers acting certain sequences like in the Flindt version, and Greve has keeps Flindt’s addition of a Snow Queen, a flower fairy and a girl solo for the Arabic Dance.

What Flindt did very well was to make roles for a lot of dancers and give each soloist a substantial amount to do. It was not good choreography but it was good roles and he could milk the comedy element though his superb timing. Kenneth Greve does not have that specific talent and even the heavily pushed “Dance of the Sugar Flutes” does not charm the audience in spite of Jette Buchwald and a large group of child dancers. 

For some odd reason the role of Drosselmeyer is shared between a non-speaking actor and a dancer. It seems strange that the Royal Danish Ballet with it dramatic tradition could not find a suitable Drosselmeyer in its own ranks. As it is the Drosselmeyer solution do not work. Either is the actor not funny enough or his material is too thin. He gets too much stage time, time that could have been used better to tell the story.

On the dancing site, Andrew Bowman partnered Kizzy Howard in the grand pas de deux. Kizzy Howard came out of the corps to dance this role, and although she obviously dances a lot better than what is required in the corps de ballet, she does not come across as real ballerina material. Bowman was great in some steps and very bad in others. They will be followed by no less than five other casts.

Juliette Schaufuss, seen earlier as Fanny in “La Conservatoire  was a strong Klara. Silja Schandorff danced the Snow Queen as an über-classical ballerina, but the muddled story line did not really need her for more than a ballet exercise. Thomas Lund, who will dance the prince at future performances was wasted in a supporting role as a hooded sidekick in the Arabic sequence.

The scenography is by Karin Betz, who has worked with Langedal on most of his productions. She had her debut as ballet designer with a bold “Lifeguards at Amager” for the Bournonville celebration. She has created some very beautiful costumes for the Biedermeyer Christmas party and for the ensembles. The décor for first ark would be fine had it not included a typical Langedal feuture a stage bridge in front of the décor and numerous “cuts” to show a working backstage (again typically Langedal). But the décor for second act with full mirror walls is problematics. Of course it triples the amounts of dancers, but it blurs the scale and focus that is so essential for classical ballet. Fortunately the back mirror is blended for the grand pas de deux. It work for the Chinese segments witch introduces bikes on stage but it kills most other numbers. It is not an easy transition to design for a ballet production. Scale and space are so important and a daft but potentially funny idea as the big bunny kills the finale because of the scale issue.            

We must conclude that this was not the “Nutcracker” for generations. There were some good segments but on the whole if suffered from a lack of trust in its inherited qualities and from a non-working pairing of two different artistic temperaments with very different agendas.