I have to say, although I did enjoy this ballet, I didn’t like it quite as much as the other two I’ve seen. The whole concept was a really interesting one and there were some things I really liked… but there were parts I didn’t think worked quite so well.
For the most part, the dancing was really good in this ballet… and I really loved the costumes; especially the Oriental style ones. One of the biggest problems I had, though, was that I couldn’t figure out what the dancing meant/what story it was telling all of the time. There were some really nice dances with the people dressed in different costumes, but I didn’t know who they were supposed to be… the dolls, even in act two?
I felt that the appearance of the nutcracker prince at first worked really well. And the dancing between Clara and the prince seemed to come across as very emotion-filled.
What I didn’t really like was the fact that, as soon as there was applause, the main dancers broke character to bow/curtsy in acknowledgment. That kind of threw me out of the story/dance quite a lot.
I liked that there was the use of translations, which was a good way of including people from other countries. It was also nice to see the way it was shown the characters felt cold, for instance. I liked the dancing and the costumes. It was a really good interpretation of the story of the Nutcracker.
