We pointed the other day to the article New York Times dance critic Alastair Macauley wrote about the different Nutcrackers he saw this holiday season. In it, he touched on a Berkeley performance that he particularly liked.
Berkeleysider Jean Chu points out that Macauley wrote at greater length about the Berkeley Ballet Theater‘s Nutcracker on his blog. She rightly notes, “It’s neat that he finds Berkeley ballet’s interpretation so compelling for the same reasons many of us find Berkeley itself so compelling.” Here’s an extract from Macauley’s blog post (but follow the link to read the whole thing):
This “Nutcracker” has taped music and a cast mainly of children, and its Clara and Fritz are two homeless orphans. My companion, a Bay Area dance aficionado, had previously urged me to see not this production but Ballet San Jose’s. Yet afterward my friend found that this one had provided a “Nutcracker” experience in some ways fuller -– more touching, more about human connections -– than San Francisco Ballet’s. And, just as the 1915 World Fair setting of that production offers one aspect of Bay Area history, the homeless characters of this one offer another. Christmas here is an issue for children excluded from its conventional festivities.
