Review: Mark Morris Dancers -- The Hard Nut

The third in my series of Cal Performances blind dates was the Mark Morris Dancers take on Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, "The Hard Nut". It shares the usual Nutcracker approach of being a family-friendly event (in the literal sense of the audience being composed largely of families with children -- not at all in the moralistic sense, given that some of the dancing was considerably more salacious than your typical ballet). As usual, the plot was a thin tissue on which were hung a glittering assortment of dances. (My impression is that your typical Nutcracker performance is an exercise in getting as many different dancers from as many different age and ability levels on stage as possible. This version doesn't quite go to that extreme, but then there are a lot of other Nutcracker performances in the Bay Area to fill that niche.) The setting has been updated from the usual generic Victorianish one to '70s suburbia, starting off with the children watching a tv set as the parents prepare for the holiday cocktail party. The tin soldiers have been updated to GI Joes, and so forth. The plot, such as it is, attempts to moralize about superficiality and inner worth, with a story-within-the-story about a princess cursed with ugliness by the rat-queen, who can only be cured by finding a hero who can crack "the hard nut". In theory, when he does so, the princess becomes beautiful, but then rejects the hero who turns ugly "like a nutcracker", who in turn is redeemed and transformed by the true-sighted love of the girl in the framing story. All dance.

The problem is that the events of this redemption-transformation-rejection-redemption-transformation sequence take about 10 seconds of stage time and are only sketchily mimed out. If you hadn't read the program notes carefully, you'd have no clue what just happened. (For that matter, even if you had read the program notes, it was possible to miss it -- as my date demonstrated.) It could have been a very sweet sequence and instead it was a huh? moment.

But the dancing overall was very enjoyable. The rats, in particular, were delightful. There was a certain amount of amusing gender-bending in that the general corps de ballet (sp?) that performed the massed snowflake/flower/etc. dances was completely gender-neutral, giving us the sight of a delicately-costumed morning glory doing power-lifts of the heroic nutcracker during one of the dances. All in all, a frothy bit of holiday fluff, but worth the time to enjoy it.

Have I mentioned ...

... that I hate allergies? I don't know what I was planning to get done today, but mostly I did what I've wanted to do for the last several days: lay around on the couch watching movies and sniffling. I can't even tell if the Claritin is making any difference. At least I got a chance to check out the fireplace after installing the additional fiberglass gasket around the lid. No smoking this time (even though I still don't have the new glass for the door) and the thermal curtains closing off the living room seem to be working as designed as well. Yay. Also found a new favorite local coffee shop (excellent baked goods, electrical outlets, free wireless): Sweet Adeline (at the intersection of Adeline and MLK Way. Did some more appetizer development work on the "carrot clumps" but haven't had a chance to complete the taste test because I still can't taste anything. *grrr* *sniff*