Forget the Rockettes Even if Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker isn’t really new, it’s still good BY JEFFREY GANTZ

For all that it’s the most commercially successful dance enterprise since they invented the waltz, The Nutcracker has always been a hard nut for critics. The first act is all story and no (serious) dancing; the second is all dancing and no story; the central character is a little girl who’s too young to dance on pointe or be a romantic lead; and the climactic pas deux is performed by a couple who have the most tenuous connection with what’s gone before. No wonder the ballet’s 1892 premiere was only a modest success. Tchaikovsky biographer David Brown draws the conclusion that "by contrast [with Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty] the story of The Nutcracker was not merely trite, it was pointless. . . . The Nutcracker is meaningless in the profoundest sense." Critics have largely reacted by deciding it’s a work for children but not adults.

The novella that gave rise to the ballet, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nußknacker und Mausekönig ("Nutcracker and Mouse King"), was for children and adults, with seven-year-old Marie seeing beneath the ugliness of the Nutcracker (in reality her Godpapa Droßelmeier’s nephew) and thus breaking the spell that Mouse Queen (mother to the ballet’s Mouse King) had cast on him. It’s a complex work from a major literary figure; the much-simplified libretto given to Tchaikovsky made little (if not no) sense. Boston Ballet has hewed closer than most to the original concept, casting actual children (as opposed to young adults) as Clara (the usual name for Hoffmann’s Marie), Fritz, and the party guests and creating a second act (which in effect begins with the appearance of the Snow King and Queen) in which Clara’s dolls-come-to-life offer lessons about love in the adult world. This approach makes for a more realistic first act; though Gelsey Kirkland was a convincing "child" Clara in the 1977 American Ballet Theatre/Mikhail Baryshnikov version, few companies have such a principal dancer. On the other hand, when Clara and the Nutcracker dance the climactic pas de deux, showing what they’ve learned from the dolls, they at least have a bit of romantic history behind them. Boston Ballet’s Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, along with the Snow King and Queen and Dew Drop, have to invent their story on the spot. Over the past 20 years, the success of the company’s second act has depended less on the choreography, which has undergone numerous changes, than on the talents of the dancers and their ability to create relationships.

The choreography for this year’s Nutcracker is credited to former resident choreographer Daniel Pelzig in the first act and company artistic director Mikko Nissinen in the second. It’s not quite that simple: the casting pages cite Bruce Marks for Russian and the children’s part of Tea, Gianni Di Marco for the Polichinelles in Mother Ginger, and Lev Ivanov for the grand pas de deux, and in fact many elements in both acts — for example, the four mice who, paw in paw, spoof the Dance of the Cygnets in Swan Lake — preceded both Pelzig and Nissinen. The original 1892 St. Petersburg production of The Nutcracker was a mix of Marius Petipa and his assistant Ivanov, who took over when Petipa became (or claimed to have become) ill. Almost every Nutcracker since has been a pastiche; there’s no way to credit everyone, but it’s well to keep in mind that what you’re watching has evolved as much as it’s been created.

The strength of Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker has always been that first act. Some good moments have fallen by the wayside: the little girl telling her father how much to pay for a Christmas tree in the prologue; Fritz and Clara trying to look through the keyhole into the parlor; the concentric circles with which the children’s march ended; the Maid downing a leftover glass of port after the owl clock blinked at her. But the way Fritz and Clara squabble over the sled outside sets up their squabble over the Nutcracker inside, and for all that there are only six adult couples as guests, this act is packed with toothsome detail: Grandfather’s attempts to appropriate Fritz’s new hobby horse; the Delivery Boy’s ecstatic reaction after getting a big tip from Herr Silberhaus; the way the Delivery Boy, who’s not an official guest but is helping with Droßelmeier’s boxes, begs Droßelmeier to ask the Maid to polka and then hand her off to him so the two can dance (after which Droßelmeier ushers them into a side room for a little off-stage smooching); the way the suddenly chivalrous Bear kisses Frau Silberhaus’s hand; the way the Maid slips the box with the pearl necklace to Grandfather during the Großvater Tanz so he can present it to Grandmother at the end of the dance; the way the owl clock’s eyes glow in the dark; the tripudial leap one mouse gives after tearing off the arm of Clara’s gingerbread doll; and the way Tchaikovsky’s ecstatically erotic "transition" sequence between the death of the Mouse King and the appearance of the Snowflakes is turned into a duet for the Snow King and Queen.

The second act continues to look for a similar sharpness of focus. Nissinen’s Tea has less stereotyped "Chinese" movement (now can we get rid of the finger pointing altogether?), he’s reduced the sugar content of Marzipan, and he’s made the Waltz of the Flowers a ladies’-only affair once again. What’s still missing is a complexity of interaction in these dances. The Spanish lady in Chocolate used to snap the hearts of her four suitors like pieces of Valrhona; now she scarcely looks at the two men who’re dancing with her. The harem girl in Coffee was poised between two slaves; now it’s a simple duet. There’s no tension between the one shepherd and two tutu’d shepherdesses in Marzipan, and the way Dew Drop now pops on and off stage waters down her story of transience set against that of the flowers. What are these dances trying to say to Clara and the Nutcracker? Not that the Ballet doesn’t have other pressing concerns, like where next year’s Nutcracker will be taking place, but it would be good to see this act not just rechoreographed but rethought.

A really good dancer, of course, can supply what the librettist or the choreographer might seem to have left out. Barbora Kohoutková flows through Dew Drop’s tricky transitions like spring water, limpid in position and subtle in her phrasing, with a Viennese sophistication. (If she were a pianist, she’d be her estimable Czech compatriot Ivan Moravec.) Dancing last Thursday, Sarah Lamb had the steps but not the connections. I was down to see Kohoutková and Pavel Gurevich as Sugar Plum and Cavalier on Friday, but they were replaced by the Thursday pair, Lorna Feijóo and Yury Yanowsky. Feijóo’s Sugar Plum is a commanding presence, whether she’s being maternal with Clara or changing manège gears faster than Seabiscuit. The way she varies speed and position while turning makes the specifics of the choreography irrelevant: like Kohoutková, she’s always expressive. Yanowsky is an almost too attentive Cavalier; he might puff out his chest a little. Rie Ichikawa, who danced Sugar Plum Saturday, looked tentative by comparison; it was nonetheless a creditable effort from a corps member. Sabi Varga was her authoritative Cavalier, though like Yanowsky he flew a little out of control in his tarantella solo.

The best Snow King and Queen pair I saw were Christopher Budzynski and Pollyana Ribeiro, both radiant enough to melt the snow from the weekend’s nor’easter. Among the other performances of note: Joel Prouty as the Delivery Boy (you know right away he’s sweet on the Maid) and Harlequin and in Russian (eight consecutive split jumps) and Tea; Rie Ichikawa’s Columbine (her look of surprise when she popped out of the box); James Whiteside’s Bear (a layout somersault and a deft transition from grizzly to gracious when he saw Frau Silberhaus) and his turn in Marzipan; Budzynski’s Nutcracker; Luke Luzicka’s Mouse King (a gasp went up Thursday when he fell out of the orchestra pit) and all the mice; Kelly Potter in Chocolate; Romi Beppu and Nelson Madrigal in Coffee (slinky); Melanie Atkins and Pavel Gurevich in Coffee (she using her shoulders to measure sexual distance the way Kyra Strasberg used to); Michael Cusumano in Russian (another layout somersault). Allisyn Hsieh seemed the most emotive Clara, Dylan Tedaldi the most assertive Fritz.

At the Saturday matinee, a woman from Vermont who had seen New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker the previous weekend offered the opinion that Boston’s is better. These kinds of comparisons are always subjective, but after watching 13 different Nutcrackers on video over the past few weeks (see my round-up in last week’s Phoenix), I think it’s safe to put this one up among the best of the traditional versions. It doesn’t have a "concept," but most of those that do come out the worse. It’s exceptionally well conducted (by Jonathan McPhee), and what it lacks in polish and precision as compared with NYCB or the Kirov Ballet it makes up for with energy and personality. The care that’s gone into this production (like the way Clara’s dolls under the tree in act one are miniature versions of the ones that dance in act two) explains why it’s seen by more persons each year than any other. It’ll be a black day in Boston if the world’s most successful Nutcracker finds itself without an appropriate home.