Reflecting on 40 Years of "The Nutcracker" with Paul Parish
This November we asked community member and dance critic Paul Parish to share some of his memories of BBT's production of The Nutcracker.
”I was a fly on the wall when BBT’s Nutcracker took shape. Around 1986 Miss Sally offered me a work-study scholarship—’you’ll be a studio rat, take daily class and pick up the technique best you can’–I was already a dance critic (West Coast correspondent for Ballet Review in New York) but was hungry to feel the moves from the inside. I’d been a dance-mad rock-and-roll dancer, but I'd never ‘studied.’ Ballet had ideas in it: and it was sweeter, sharper, more delicious. So I was taking fundamental ballet and stumbling along behind the pros in Miss Sally’s brilliant classes. It was the best thing since I’d won a Rhodes Scholarship to study in England, where I got bit by the ballet bug at the Royal Ballet. Finally, at BBT I watched and copied and learned what dancers actually do.”
Our “Nutcracker” was a collaboration between Sally and her son Robert Nichols [“Robbie”], who had come back to Berkeley to help forge a professional company after dancing with Chicago City Ballet. The school was already producing terrific dancers, such as Arch Higgins, who were performing “with the grown-ups” regularly. And Nutcracker developed bit by bit as a bridge between the youth company and BBT.
First, it was outreach to schools – a group of BBT dancers would pile in the van and go show “hit tunes of ballet” – highlights from the great works, showing high-power technique and style in low-tech settings, to music like Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” They wowed the kids and showed them dance was not for sissies.
Telling the whole story was another matter: not only did it require acting, but it also needed a party scene, an army of mice, a living room, presents and tin soldiers all under a Christmas tree that could grow. By 1986, they put on a show at Albany High. With genius lighting designer Alexander V. Nichols [“Alex”], Sally’s younger son, amazing things could be done to make up for the lack of opera-house scenery, and it got better each year, with adorable dances for even the youngest dancers.
But what gave it staying power was the push-pull of Sally’s pure dances against the warmth and ideas of Robbie’s dramaturgy. Sally’s canons, the diagonals and circles of “Snow,” and the thrilling counterpoint of “Flowers,” all of which gave back-bone to the radical idea of “Clara without a home.” As the New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay put it in an admiring review ten years ago: BBT gave “a “Nutcracker” experience in some ways fuller – more touching, more about human connections – than San Francisco Ballet’s.”
And there were sparkling inventions along the way – The Cookie-soldier’s dance! The Shepherdesses with their little dance student lambs. Arabian! Russian!
Bringing it to Julia Morgan stage made many things gel: A} the audience knew where to go; B} Studio B [upstairs] led by the back stairs straight backstage, so make-up, costuming, warm-up, etc. got tied in easily; and C} Morgan’s redwood classic expressed many of the virtues in Robbie’s aesthetic – simplicity, compassion, and peace-making. David Ludwig’s backdrops [painted on silk, which took the light beautifully] pulled the old sanctuary’s atmosphere into focus and supported the ballet’s ideals. Preserving the original Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy as the crown jewel cemented Sally and Robbie’s success in bringing the traditions of “Nutcracker” into our modern world in a new way without betrayal of the core values of old.
