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Description:
Don't expect battling mice, giant Christmas trees, and waltzing snowflakes in world-renowned choreographer Maurice Bejart's boldly different take on Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet, The Nutcracker. Discarding entirely the traditional story of Clara and the statuette she rescues and accompanies to a candy kingdom, Bejart uses Tchaikovsky's score to accompany his own life story (which only briefly portrays Christmas). When his mother "departs on a long journey," the 7-year-old Bim (danced by Damaas Thijs) is seduced into the world of dance by a character (Gil Roman) who represents both Faust's Mephistopheles and Marius Petipa, the groundbreaking French choreographer and dancer who brought Tchaikovsky's original ballet to life. While Bim learns dance, he still envisions the ideal of his mother, who is represented by a towering Botticelli Venus-like statue and with whom he finally achieves a bond in a near-nude pas de deux that more than hints of incest. As in the original, the second-act divertissement is mostly different dance vignettes, here represented as acts in a Marseilles circus. In the greatest divergence from the original score, the middle of the act adds a handful of French café tunes featuring Yvette Horner's accordian, which can be heard embellishing a few other dances (and has something of a parallel in Tchaikovsky's innovative use of the celeste). The grand pas de deux, however, is performed very traditionally following Petipa's original choreography. On a screen above the stage, Bejart himself appears in occasional segments explaining certain plot points, and he goes into more detail in the DVD's 22-minute behind-the-scenes feature, which also includes comments from collaborators and members of Bejart's loyal and longstanding company, Théâtre Musical de Paris Châtelet. If your mind is open to a nontraditional production that includes bare-chested boy scouts and a pair perhaps best described as "drag kings," you'll probably be fascinated by this strikingly envisioned, expertly danced performance. --David Horiuchi
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