WHILE IT IS currently in vogue to moan about the holidays, there's also something freeing about partaking in a familiar ritual like Dennis Nahat's The Nutcracker, set in the Tannenbaums' lush burgundy parlor on Christmas Eve. Each year, the boys receive their bugles, drums and horses, the girls their floppy or prissy dolls; the maids and butlers cavort with the gentlefolk of the house. Maria (other productions call her Clara) gets the most coveted toy of all, the wooden soldier Nutcracker, who comes with a history unfolded by Godfather Drosselmeyer (Nahat) by way of masks and an explosion or two.
When Maria (Karen Gabay on this night) receives the sparkling pink dress fit more for a princess than a little girl; it's "her annual pink dress," the herald of a season. With 400 pounds of dry ice for mist and 60 pounds of confetti for snowflakes, the familiarity of this very detailed ritual is hard won. And yet having everything in place—that single room lit with sparkling chandeliers, glowing lamps and orangy sconces—strips away the need for analysis so that little things can jump out at you, like Drosselmeyer's manservant, Johann (Peter Hershey), sneaking off upstairs with the maid (Erena Ishii), while everyone else is mingling and gift-giving. This year, Nahat's pantomime storytelling seemed crisper than ever. The rigid Nutcracker soldiers seemed more desperately outmatched by superior strategy and relentlessness from the scurrying mice battalion (the rodent hoards being children from Ballet San Jose School).
After the Mouse King's funeral, Maria emerges in the pink dress to greet the prince (Michael Doerner) be-sparkled in a white tunic. This year, Maria's growth from little darting girl in the safety of her home to graceful adult poised to rule a domain seemed especially stark, possibly due to the subtle expressive changes Gabay makes to her movements. When Doerner hands her the pink rose, she cradles it just as she had held the Nutcracker doll, and the poignancy of seeing the woman in the girl, of both continuity and growth, echoes what the Nutcracker ritual is all about.
It may be the same swan taking the prince and Maria off to Muscovy, but it's not the same viewer or the same Ballet San Jose—for example, no Stephane Dalle or Dalia Rawson. But this year offers the chance to see Doerner as a most smiling and winsome Nutcracker/prince; staunch Ramon Moreno dancing the Tsar in the Grand Pas de Deux with a flitting, twiglike Maria Jacobs (as Tsarina Tatianna). Tall Kaleena Opdyke dances the lead Harem Lady, seductive even in her glance as she performs those beautiful hand movements (along with newcomers Haley Henderson and Zhang Jing) to Tchaikovsky's hypnotic oboe showcase in "The Land of the Shifting Sands."
This year offers two principals like Maria Jacobs and Karen Gabay dancing together however briefly, plus the rare appearance of artistic associate and former ballerina Roni Mahler (comical as both Helga the housekeeper and Castillian Queen Theresa). Freedom of ritual is not having to worry if the ensemble work seems brittle or clumsy or cluttered but rather basking in a moment of amazement as Doerner tumbles Gabay in spirals over his back and then disappears. Some people take naturally to ritual and repetition; for those driven to always search for the "new," ritual may an acquired taste for a demanding palate. This year, Dennis Nahat's The Nutcracker has helped me acquire the taste.
The Nutcracker, presented by Ballet San Jose, plays Wednesday-Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday-Saturday at 1:30 and 7:30pm and Sunday at 1:30pm with a special children's series performance Thursday at 1:30pm at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd., San Jose. Tickets are $25-$78. (408.288.2800)
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