Valentino Zucchetti’s New, Glitzy Nutcracker
Dancer and choreographer Valentino Zuccheti talks about the brand new Nutcracker he created for New English Ballet Theatre
This article was first published on London Unattached
A brand new Nutcracker is about to come to London. A New English Ballet Theatre (NEBT) production, it’s characteristically innovative, glitzy and set in the modern day. It stole a march on all other Nutcrackers by hitting the stage at the end of October. After a tour of small UK stages it will take a brief detour to the Bahamas. And then it’ll come to London for a short burst of performances just before Christmas.
Clearly, there is a lot to unpack there, and I can think of nobody better to do it than the man tasked with shaping this new Nutcracker, The Royal Ballet First Soloist and award-winning choreographer, Valentino Zucchetti.
Admitting “it’s always a bit daunting to tackle the big classics”, Zucchetti nevertheless set to work in the summer with his customary creativity and drive. He had a template to work from, a fresh plot line thought up by NEBT founder and Artistic Director Karen Pilkington-Miksa and Company Manager Emily Bridge.
Though essentially faithful to the well-known Nutcracker story – Act I real life Christmas Eve party, where young Clara is given a nutcracker doll by the mysterious Drosselmeyer, followed by an Act II set in a dream land, where a series of divertissements culminate in the famous Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux – NEBT’s The Nutcracker goes its own way.
Zucchetti outlines the differences:
“We set the party scene in the 1990s, so there’s a lot of elements that are from the 1990s. A lot of the costume designs have been inspired by the celebrities of the time. One of the girls is wearing a Diana-style dress, for example. The teenagers look like normal teenagers. In the teenage dance I made them all do moves that were famous in the 90s.”
“We don’t have Drosselmeyer per se, instead we have a party entertainer called Derren, who is an illusionist, so he hypnotises people as a party trick, just like Derren Brown – that’s why I called him Derren.”
Zucchetti kept Clara’s tiresome younger brother, Fritz:
“In this production, Fritz is obsessed with pirates, so Derren gives him a pirate ship as a present.”
“From the very beginning, you’re going to see Fritz being obsessed with pirate things. This is very important, because one of the biggest differences in this production is that we don’t have mice.”
The fierce battle between mice and toy soldiers is central to the transformation scene in traditional productions of The Nutcracker, marking the transition between real life and Clara’s dream journey. In Zucchetti’s production, though, Derren hypnotises Clara and then,
“When we enter the battle scene, we are actually going inside the pirate ship, because for the whole party scene, Clara has had her brother pestering her with pirate things; for her now, it’s the Nutcracker and his soldiers against the pirates; and the Lead Pirate is the same person who does Fritz”.
“That’s another big difference, and that is very much part of the Caribbean idea: it’s fitting for our big tour of the Bahamas, which is another reason why we did it, because it’s also an important tour, but I think it’s a nice little twist.”
Central to Act II in traditional productions are the national dances: Spanish, Arabian, Russian… but these have become controversial of late, with claims of cultural appropriation; so, wisely, Zucchetti is giving the Act II divertissements his own twist, which also has the merit of establishing greater coherence between the two Acts.
“In the party scene, there is an exchange of presents: each parent gives a present to another parent or to a child. Each of these presents represents the divertissements we are going to see later. It’s very clear: somebody gets a winter hat, and that’s the Russian; we have the coffee pot, which is the Arabian”.
What you really can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, interfere with too much is the emblematic Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux, the culmination of the ballet, and one of the prolific Petipa’s most felicitous pieces of original choreography. I wondered, did Valentino Zucchetti leave well alone, or did he put his mark on that, too?
What you really can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, interfere with too much is the emblematic Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux, the culmination of the ballet, and one of the prolific Petipa’s most felicitous pieces of original choreography. I wondered, did Valentino Zucchetti leave well alone, or did he put his mark on that, too?
“Clara becomes the Sugar Plum Fairy. So, again, it’s about Clara entering the dreamland. When you dream about the hero or heroine of the story, it’s usually you, so she’s dreaming of herself.”
And he crafted a choreography to suit that idea.
Zucchetti uses Tchaikovsky’s glorious score, though with a few judicious cuts, “to make it more kid-friendly”, but also because there are limits to how much a small company, with a limited budget, can reasonably be expected to do.
NEBT, now well into its second decade, has gone from small beginnings, when it aimed simply “ to develop young talent in dance, music and design”, to its current more assertive, expanding phase. This season it employs 15 dancers, many at an early stage of their careers, and all individually picked by Valentino Zucchetti himself, who’s been Associate Choreographer since the mid-2010s.
“This year I was very involved in the auditioning process – I personally went through 450 CVs myself – and I organised the audition here at the Opera House, and I made sure that we’ve raised the level of the company by word of mouth and also internationally.
“Each dancer in my production does five or six roles… It’s hard. In London, we have six shows in three days. For normal ballet companies, double Nutcracker three days in a row is not a problem – ENB has 70/80 dancers and each dancer does one role, maybe two. I had to be mindful of how sustainable it is for the dancers.”
An extra touch of glitter will be added with the presence of guest principals: Guest Principal at Wiener’s Staatsballett, stars in UK performances, while Valentino Zucchetti himself will partner Royal Ballet Principal Mayara Magri in The Bahamas.
This Nutcracker marks a big step in NEBT’s development. It’s the first full-length ballet it has commissioned – its repertoire so far consists of tailor-made shorter pieces – and the company plans to expand the current production, as it goes on to become a mainstay of its repertoire.
Already, the production is being expanded for the Bahamas run, says Zucchetti:
“The Bahamas shows are very important. It’s a completely different venue – a massive theatre, the stage is massive, and we also have kids, we have local kids we’re working with.”
NEBT has toured internationally, including in Europe and the USA, but why specifically the Bahamas? Easy: NEBT director Karen Pilkington-Miksa keeps good contacts in Nassau, where she lived for ten years, and so the invitation to perform there came naturally.
So, if you’ve had enough of the big beast Nutcrackers, try this smaller-scale, but no less enchanting Nutcracker. The last word to choreographer and co-producer Valentino Zucchetti:
“I made sure that the ballet side of things stays as magical and entertaining and as dynamic as we can make it.”
So, when, at the very end, Darren snaps his fingers, Zucchetti hopes the audience will feel as if they themselves “have been hypnotised and are now awake.” Was it all our dream, too?
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner Image: New English Ballet Theatre in The Nutcracker. Photo: Andrej Uspenski)
New English Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker is at the Sainsbury Theatre, LAMDA 18/12 to 20/12