What, you say, tickets to see “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center will blow your entire holiday budget in one afternoon? Please god, you say, not another iteration of Clara and that damn soldier. I’m begging, you grovel, no more Sugar Plum Fairy.
But then what about the children and their wide-eyed wonder at the Nutcracker’s miraculously growing Christmas tree, their delight in the sparkles and spangles of that twirling fairy and her cavalier? What about the need for family traditions and events that mark the onset of that time of year known as “the holiday season”?
I have, my friends, a solution. A solution that incorporates disco, ballet, hoofing, bubble-wrap stomping, adagio, pratfalls, shtick, glissades, contractions, hinges, arabesques, songs, and thumb-sucking. Not to mention spangles, sparkles, and fairies, all set to Tchaikovsky’s glorious music.
Where do you find all those things in one performance? Go see “Nut/Cracked,” danced by the wildly, wonderfully, witty David Parker and The Bang Group. TBG has been on the dance scene in New York for more than a decade, making wonderful dances that put to rest the idea that “going to the ballet” has to be a Serious Event. An evening with TBG shows us how elemental movement is to the human spirit, and how exciting it can be when artists refuse to be confined to one particular generic box: who says that men can’t dance en pointe? Why isn’t it possible to make music and rhythm just from the sounds of velcro sticking and unsticking? And where is it written that choreographers shouldn’t make their audiences laugh out loud?
“Nut/Cracked” is the Nutcracker story for a New York audience (and anyone else who appreciates a good mash-up and really, who among us doesn’t?) It’s also a great way to introduce children to dancie – particularly to boys who think that dancing is “sissy” or “boring” or “silly.” Some of “Nut/Cracked” is silly—but it’s also athletic, visually interesting, smart, and poetic. The dancing is superb, as it always is with TBG, and you’ll leave the theater smiling, humming “Waltz of the Flowers” under your breath, and realizing that the phrase “Sugar Plum Fairy” now has a whole new meaning.
For ticket information about “Nut/Cracked” and other holiday programs at DTW, click here. To read what Ballet-Dance Magazine wrote about TBG a few years ago, click here.
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