This December, Land of Sweets on county map
Adam Stern calls Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” “a masterpiece that’s timeless.”
“When you come to the theater, you will be swept up by every visual, aural sensation thrown at you,” Stern said. “When you leave the theater, it’s Tchaikovsky you will take home.”
Stern conducts 35 members of the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra in two performances of Olympic Ballet Theatre’s “The Nutcracker” Saturday and Sunday at Bothell’s Northshore Performing Arts Center.
It’s the start of a month of performances by the ballet company at four different venues, including dates with their 19-year performing partner, the Everett Symphony.
The ballet performs with 46 musicians from the Everett Symphony Dec. 8 and 9 at the Everett Civic Auditorium under the baton of Ron Friesen.
Performances in Edmonds and Arlington are to a recorded score by the Netherlands’ Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Antal Dorati.
Tchaikovsky created the symphony in 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia. It had instant success and has been performed ever since, on the concert stage as well as with the world’s ballet companies. Olympic Ballet debuted its first full-length “Nutcracker” in 1982.
The fully-staged and -costumed production to tour across Snohomish County includes 100 performers in two casts.
“One of the rewarding things for me as a director is bringing this number of professional guest artists and designers to all the children who are having the experience of their lifetime,” said Olympic’s artistic director, Helen Wilkins.
She calls the two orchestras performing the score an “irreplaceable experience.”
“The audience hears every note; the presence is so different; the cymbals go off, and you’re right there,” she said. But even without a live orchestra, “People appreciate the greatness of the ballet.”
In addition to the corps de ballet performers, guest artists fill solo roles.
Natascha Greenwalt-Murphy, who has danced with the Joffrey Ballet, Spectrum Dance and DASS dance, dances as the Snow Queen, and Carl Massey, also with DASS, dances the Snow King, Nutcracker Prince and Arabian.
Harlequin and Columbine, the mechanical dolls, are danced by Christin Call, who has danced with the Evergreen City Ballet and DASS, and Robert Talamantez, who trained at the School of American Ballet among other companies.
John Yingling, who has played leading roles with Olympic for 15 years, dances Herr Drosselmeier.
In the Grand Pas de Deux, the Sugar Plum Fairy is danced by So Young An, a former dancer with Korean National Ballet, and the Cavalier by Jason Jordan, of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, and Feld Ballet.
Stern said Tchaikovsky was a master of musical picture-painting. The “Waltz of the Snowflakes,” for example, he calls “the embodiment of nature on stage.” Seeing the snow scenes, “literally, you have to abandon any thoughts of being earthbound,” Stern said. “You must be lighter than air, and floating on it. The music embodies that.”
During the Mother Ginger scene, the music is a pile-on of comic moments as the buffoons come out from under the character’s grandmotherly skirts.
It’s all a portrait of the exaggerations of childhood - from a composer who in some ways never grew up, Stern said.
There’s a sailing tempo as Clara goes with her Nutcracker Prince to the Land of Sweets. And the composer maneuvers the plot to different lands - what Stern calls “the diversity party” of dances from Spain, China, Italy, Russia and Arabia.
“Tchaikovsky knew the folk music of these countries; he had spent time in Italy and France,” Stern said, adding that he gave his own country, Russia, the best one.
“You get this raw, vodka-soaked texture from the strings. It is a phenomenal dance.”
Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com