A Classic Holiday Ballet

Ballet enthusasists track the passage of time in terms of a ballet company’s spring season, winter season, and “The Nutcracker.” For those folks who instead rely on a calendar, the general consensus is that the opening night of “The Nutcracker” is the official beginning of the string of ensuing holidays. It is a time capsule of magic, warmth, and joy—for adults, a foray into childhood and innocent dreams; for children, an escape into an extraordinary land in which one can be transported by hot-air balloon into the Land of Sweets where imagination can triumph. It is virtually impossible to destroy, thanks to its timeless Tchaikovsky score—the “Sugarplum Fairy” variation surely has a higher play count than even the most standard of Christmas tunes—and its precious characters. Thankfully, Mikko Nissinen, artistic director of Boston Ballet, has not ventured into the common practice, as of late, of creating some innovative, delirious hallucinogen with no ties to the original, beautiful children’s tale that was E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the King of Mice.” In his production, which runs at the Boston Opera House through Dec. 28, Nissinen sticks, for the most part, to the tried and true formula, and the few innovations he does risk add charm to a story that will never suffer from superfluity.

Nissinen surely took inspiration for his first scene from George Balanchine’s interpretation, arguably the preeminent version stateside. There is the hustle and bustle of lavishly-dressed Christmas guests making their way to the Silberhaus home, and there is the same wind-up Harlequin and Columbine—an almost eerily perfect Melissa Hough, whose triple pirouettes, wide unblinking eyes, and general look of tart, wooden sweetness was even more ideal than that of an actual porcelain doll. Rather than a toy soldier, though, Nissinen gives a virtuoso turn to a life-size bear danced brilliantly by Paul Craig in a costume that seemed impossibly restricting until he whipped out several 180-degree split saut de chats. Josephine Pra and especially Altankhuyag Dugaraa were an entertaining Grandmother and Grandfather, respectively, each pulling out the stops with regards to various pensioner maladies.

The parallels begin to fade, however, with the end of the first scene. For one thing, the fairy Godfather Drosselmeier takes on an entirely new appeal. As danced by Yury Yanowsky, he is a campy Latin Byron—a sexy sorcerer with a dark purple cape and matching tights to boot. For another, while Balanchine’s Nutcracker is in actuality Drosselmeier’s nephew, Nissinen’s Nutcracker is the much older Cavalier to the Sugarplum Fairy, come from the Kingdom of the Sweets to rescue Clara and bring her to their magical empire. This has the overall effect of simplifying the plot, but it also takes away the charm of two beautiful kids falling in love on Christmas Eve. Alexandra Heier as the young Clara more than made up for this with a sweet and amiable demeanor, and effortless movements that were the epitome of grace. The same can be said of the rest of the cast of well-schooled Boston Ballet youngsters on whom the ballet rests.

The Battle of the Toy Soldiers and Mice was inventively choreographed by Daniel Pelzig. The large mice and growing Christmas tree were familiar; the Middle Eastern Mouse King who fancies dancing the Trepak, on the other hand, is an original character. But all’s well that ends well—the Mouse King is killed and the Nutcracker prevails. He takes Clara to the Enchanted Forest ruled by the Snow Queen and King, danced by Lia Cirio and Pavel Gurevich with wonderful virtuosity and panache.

The sets by Helen Pond and Herbert Senn were well worth the price of admission and generated audible awe at the rise of the curtain for the second act. The second act might be the one realm in the ballet trajectory that is familiar to almost everyone. Anyone can hum along to the Russian dance, even as Jared Redick wows with a series of split jumps reaching extraordinary levels of elevation and flexibility. An implausibly hyperextended Kathleen Breen Combes in the Arabian dance was sultry and intoxicating, as was her partner, Jaime Diaz. And was there ever a Dew Drop who lived up so greatly to her name as Misa Kuranaga? Backed by a corps de ballet of lanky, tall flowers, the slight Kuranaga seemed to float among them like a drop of mist. Not every performance was as stunning, however. As the Sugar Plum Fairy, Larissa Ponomarenko was very pretty and precise, but a bit too elusive, and her chilled rapport with Roman Rykine as her Cavalier did not help.

Nevertheless, there is something about seeing a glittering pink tutu and satin pink pointe shoes amidst a cornucopia of confections, delicacies, princes, and enchantment that never fails to win one over, no matter one’s age, gender, cynicism, and overall faith in the existence of magic. In a world full of not only civil strife but also “Giselles,” “Manons,” and “Romeo and Juliets,” “The Nutcracker” reveals that ballet can still bring one to a state of complete bliss and oblivion; that innocence can be found and not only interminably lost.There’s art for you.