Clara Wendy Moira Angela Darling Von Stahlbaum

Clara Wendy Moira Angela Darling Von Stahlbaum

The Nutcracker is the story of Clara Von Stahlbaum who is given to her birthday and Christmas (which is the same date) an enchanted Nutcracker doll by her Godfather Dr. Drosselmeyer. The ballet starts with the Christmas preparations in the house of the Von Stahlbaum. Guest arrive, and with them Clara’s Godfather with the Nutcracker. When the Christmas celebrations are over, Clara falls asleep. In her dream she goes to the tree to fetch her Nutcracker but all of the sudden the room grows larger than life and the mice in the house are trying to attack Clara, led by Queen mouse. The toy soldiers under the tree come to live and lead by the Nutcracker come for Clara’s defense. They defeat the mice and the Nutcracker banishes them. Then the Nutcracker transforms into a handsome young prince and Clara into an older beautiful self. The Nutcracker prince takes her away on a sleigh. First they travel to the Land of snow where they meet the snow queen and her subjects the snow flakes. Then they go on to the Kingdom of Sweets where they meet the Sugar Plum Fairy and her subjects. The magical journey continues on till Clara awakes in her own bed at home in her bed with the Nutcracker doll in her arm.

The Nutcracker was the second ballet I saw and it was amazing. Watching the dancers fly over the stage is a pure pleasure. The stage was amazingly done, the costumes beautiful, and the dancing breathtaking. The dancers however seemed a little bit more insecure than the once I saw in Swan Lake this summer and I believe that was because the cast especially for the first act consisted of mostly young dancers. The dancers weren’t always synchronous and thought I can only imagine how difficult that must be, it did slightly damp the performance.
The thing however that bothered me the most, besides maybe the baby that was crying in the audience for 1 hour and 40 minutes, was something that the dancers could do nothing about: the plot of the Nutcracker. In the first Act all the acting takes place, the Christmas party, when Clara is given the Nutcracker, the fight against the mice and the travel to the Land of Snow. The second Act however is merely dancers that perform for Clara and the Nutcracker on their journey through the magic land. Thought the dancing was amazing the lack of backstory and plot in the second act defeated the dancing purpose and made it less impressive. In the first Act the dancers were mostly younger and less experienced dancers, where the youngest one were little girls and boys that couldn’t be much older than five. Thought the children were cute to watch, the parts in which they danced was bound to be less difficult and even so there were clearly mistakes involved in the choreographies. This meant that in the first act the story happened but the dancing was less impressive, and in the second act the dancing was amazing but not backed up through any plot. This took away the element of ballets that I enjoy the most: the telling of the story through dance. In many ways the Nutcracker reminded me of Peter Pan, as the main character Clara and her dream of leaving to a magical world with the Nutcracker, reminds me a lot of Wendy and her journey to Neverland with Peter. Overall I really enjoyed seeing the Nutcracker and it was definitely worth seeing.