www.dancemagazine.com: Choreographer Val Caniparoli started his ballet career by performing in Lew Christensen's The Nutcracker with San Francisco Ballet in 1971. Today, he still performs with SFB as Drosselmeir, in the company's current version by Helgi Tomasson.
It takes Caniparoli a lot of concentration to stick to the choreography.
4 comments:
I find it really interesting how these productions are stagnant once opening comes, but Caniparoli gets to improve on them each year. Since the Nutcracker is performed every year around Christmas time, this is a unique opportunity for the ballet and Caniparoli. I would imagine that besides Swan Lake and a Christmas Carol, the ability to improve the show year to year is unlikely. I wonder how this will allow for modernization as time goes on. Since these four versions of a Nutcracker are ever changing, I wonder the ballet will adapt with time, especially as this is a reinvention of a classic. Also, since almost all ballet companies do the Nutcracker, each company having a unique version will be a great selling point and may encourage more people to buy tickets, especially since they all have a local touch. It will be interesting to see how many more versions of a Nutcracker Caniparoli choreographs and how the current ones evolve.
I was really interested to learn about how much the design changes with the new choreography in each place. In my head, this show is one of those that has a set of costumes that everybody uses a version of and doesn't really change, but this article really showed me that it can evolve and change just like any other show. I wonder if the choreographer has say in what the costumes are, or if that is more of a design choice or something like that. I also feel like this article could be written about any of the major classic shows that crop up everywhere, such as Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma, Annie, and the like. I feel like if you talk to any regional theatre choreographer they would be able to say the same thing about one show or another. I have not seen a production of The Nutcracker since I was young, and reading this article has made me want to look for one to see this winter.
Nope this is my dream. I would love to do the Nutcracker over and over changing it each time to see how cool and crazy it could get. But at the same time there is a kind of freeing creativity when you know you cannot change it too much or people will get mad, it would be fun to push that just a little. Chicago did that a year or two ago and I was mad, it was unrecognizable as the Nutcracker story. And because of it, like he feared in the article, the Joffrey lost my patronage last year for their production. I want to do a version that tells a cohesive story not one where the story ends after the battle and is just pretty dancing till the end. To me Clara/Maria is not the most interesting part of the story, its Drosselmeyer, Nutcracker, and the Mouse King that are the most interesting to me. I want my version to be full off magic tricks, brimming with spectacle and a battle that actually feels dangerous not just like bad kid acting and flimsy dancing.
I've seen this version of the Nutcracker every year since I was a little kid which is interesting because in my memory it doesn't change that much year to year. I guess it has changed a lot since I was like five but I have no real memory of what it was like back then. This is the first year I will not be seeing this production of the Nutcracker which makes me sad because it is a mother- daughter tradition, but I will be seeing the Nutcracker elsewhere so I can compare the shows. I think that it is interesting that he has been part of these productions for so long because just one show can get boring. I also think that it is cool that he has collaborated with designers and been able to fully create the show because it is important that all the designs are made around the coreography and the dancers so it makes sense that he had such a large role.
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