If final yr’s manufacturing proved something, it was that measurement and spirit matter. The littler the youngsters are, the extra huge the stage appears, lending the story enchantment. Sure, there are memorable grownup characters: the Sugarplum Fairy and Dewdrop, Mom Ginger and the Mouse King. However the children are the ballet’s coronary heart, the glue — what guides us down that path to really feel the emotions.
This yr, rejoice! The tiny our bodies are again — although, due to the pandemic, they’ve little expertise. Of the 126 within the manufacturing (there are two casts) 108 are first-timers within the present.
Dena Abergel, Metropolis Ballet’s kids’s repertory director, sees “The Nutcracker,” which opens Friday at Lincoln Middle, as Balanchine’s coaching floor: It teaches kids of the Metropolis Ballet-affiliated faculty the right way to turn into performers.
Typically, they begin out as Angels, progressing to extra technically superior elements — just like the Sweet Canes and the Polichinelles — till they age out (or develop too tall for the costumes). Alongside the best way, they be taught choreography and professionalism.
However this yr, with so many ranging from scratch, is completely different. “Not one of the main dancers and a lot of the dancers interval have by no means been in ‘The Nutcracker,’” Abergel stated. “I’ve by no means had a Marie who doesn’t even know what the social gathering scene is, or a Prince who doesn’t know the sequence of the ballet. That’s simply by no means occurred earlier than.”
As anticipated, this younger era is thrilled. Eleanor Murphy, 9, who alternates the a part of the Bunny with Taiga Emmer, 8, first noticed the Metropolis Ballet manufacturing when she was 3. “After the present, I used to be screaming as a result of I didn’t need to go residence,” she stated. “I took an image with one of many Snowflakes, which was cool. I all the time needed to be in ‘The Nutcracker,’ and now I’m in ‘The Nutcracker.’”
She wrapped her arms round herself and giggled. (It’s that sort of yr. The cuteness is subsequent degree.)
Abergel is happy to see these children’ recent strategy; since they haven’t grown up within the manufacturing, they are going to be much less prone to mimic what they’ve seen different kids do. “They’re actually studying it from us,” she stated. “When it comes to my function, it’s actually difficult as a result of they don’t know something about rehearsing. They don’t know something concerning the stage. They don’t learn about performing. So it’s not simply educating the Angels.”
The Angel function instructs younger dancers about diagonals — the right way to cross the stage and to make a circle. It teaches them the right way to depend to music. Now, which means that she is giving the scholars new to “The Nutcracker,” Abergel stated, “a crash course to be taught every little thing about being onstage, about rehearsing, about the right way to be taught choreography, about remembering it and piecing it collectively from one rehearsal to the following.”
This made casting, too, uncommon this yr, notably when it got here to selecting Marie, the ballet’s younger heroine. Abergel and Arch Higgins, the affiliate kids’s repertory director at Metropolis Ballet, weren’t in a position to base their choices on measurement and previous expertise. And so they had little sense of the youngsters’s dramatic potential, which is essential for Marie, who helps to hold the ballet.
Abergel made up performing sequences based mostly on the choreography, “simply to see who might convey emotion, who might inform a narrative,” she stated. “It was very clear who stood out: Arch and I checked out one another and we had been like, ‘OK, right here, we go.’”
Who acquired the half? Two good associates, each 10, with starkly completely different personalities: the vivacious, dramatic Zofia Mendez and the extra serene and dreamy Caroline O’Hagan. (Abergel loves it when that occurs: It reveals the world, she stated, that you just don’t must be a particular sort to be proper for the function.) Zofia discovered that she could be taking part in Marie from her mom. “My mother requested, ‘Zofia, who’s Marie?’ as a result of she wasn’t very acquainted. I began crying, and my mother was so confused.”
“‘That function is wonderful,’” Zofia advised her mom. “So she began crying with me.”
O’Hagan first noticed ‘The Nutcracker’ when she was 2½. “I might all the time come residence and faux to be Marie,” she stated. “I by no means let my mother put away the ‘Nutcracker’ that she purchased for me.”
Carrying the ballet on their small shoulders is one factor. Marie’s silk taffeta costume for the festive social gathering scene in Act I, poses one other problem, much less spoken of: its heft and stiffness. “Once I fall asleep,” Zofia stated, “I’ve desires about myself in probably the most heavy costume, falling down in the midst of the stage. Oh, my goodness.”
Abergel is nervous about different issues: The coronavirus continues to be circulating, which implies that kids might be taken out of the present at a second’s discover. “Let’s say it was Marie,” she stated. “We’d name the Marie from final yr. However that Marie from final yr is my peak, in order that’s not an choice.”
That peak: just below 5 toes 7 inches. “In order that’s why I’m like, simply have them as ready as potential daily,” Abergel stated. “Since you don’t know what’s going to occur tomorrow.”