Birmingham Royal Ballet - refurbished Nutcracker 2022

[Guest oncnp]

Spreading a little extra magic

 

Children delighted as ballet stars take break from the stage and visit hospice - Birmingham Live (birminghammail.co.uk)

[jmhopton]

22 hours ago, alison said:

I was catching up with the Links, and an interview with John Macfarlane about the refurbishment.  At one point he mentions something about hoping that the redesign would bring tears to people's eyes at the end of the Snowflakes scene.  Well, I can report that he certainly succeeded in my case, totally unexpectedly.

Does it to me every time, Alison, the BRB version even more than the RB version.  For me, it's partly to do with the lighting. Most Companies have the light fairly bright. The BRB lighting for the land of snow is so different to anyone else's.  It's quite a dark sky looking heavy with snow and for me, perfectly captures a real sky just before snow and when it's just starting. Its just so atmospheric it always takes me back to my childhood when it seemed to snow more often and was such a magical experience. Perfect. If only it was filmed.  I suppose they've just filmed Don Q so hopefully they film the BRB Nutcracker next year.

[Sophoife]

31 minutes ago, jmhopton said:

Perfect. If only it was filmed.  I suppose they've just filmed Don Q so hopefully they film the BRB Nutcracker next year.

 

In the meantime there's always AusBallet's film of this production with Benedicte Bemet as Clara, Kevin Jackson as the Prince, and Madeleine Eastoe as Sugar Plum Fairy. Filmed in I think 2014.

[art_enthusiast]

44 minutes ago, oncnp said:

Spreading a little extra magic

 

Children delighted as ballet stars take break from the stage and visit hospice - Birmingham Live (birminghammail.co.uk)

 

So nice - I thought Hannah was injured, great to see she's back performing.

[Jan McNulty]

I saw the performance on Wednesday and both on Thursday, making a total of 4 for this run.  How I wish I lived closer to Birmingham to see even more!

 

The set and the costumes are just breath-taking.  I don't think, as an audience member, I had realised just how much the production needed an overhaul.  The refurbishment has brought out all the vibrancy of the set.

 

On Wednesday evening I felt privileged to be in the audience to see Cesar Morales, Rachele Pizzillo and Miki Mizutani giving us a sublime performance.  Cesar is such an elegant dancer - every inch the Prince and romantic lead.  Rachele was a delightful Clara with some lovely touches in her interpretation of a young girl still interested in dolls but discovering boys.  Miki was just gorgeous as Sugar Plum with her precise footwork and especially beautiful arms.  Kit Holder was a wonderful Drosselmeyer.

 

Thursday afternoon was a real treat with Tyrone Singleton, Reina Fuchigami and Yaoqian Shang leading the cast.  Yaoqian was absolutely radiant as Sugar Plum, wonderfully partnered by Tyrone.  Again Reina gave us a lovely interpretation of Clara gradually blossoming into a young woman.  Rory Mackay is an authoritative Drosselmeyer.

 

On Thursday evening we got to see ex-NB favourite Riku Ito as The Prince.  He was superb.  Again Rachele was a delight as Clara.  Laura Rodriguez was guesting from Acosta Danza as Sugar Plum.  I loved Gabriel Anderson as Drosselmeyer.

 

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Birmingham Nutcracker is surely the best in the universe and I am so lucky to have been able to see it every season it has been performed since the first season in 1990.  Roll on the 2023 season!

[art_enthusiast]

Sounds amazing. I'm tempted to try and get a ticket for one of BRB's London performances at the Royal Albert hall, if there are any left. Not sure where to sit though, as I've never seen ballet there before

[capybara]

10 minutes ago, art_enthusiast said:

Sounds amazing. I'm tempted to try and get a ticket for one of BRB's London performances at the Royal Albert hall, if there are any left. Not sure where to sit though, as I've never seen ballet there before

The RAH version uses different scenery. There is a stage (it’s not ‘in the round’) so there is seating in the arena itself. But, if you choose the raised seats and don’t want to feel too far away from the action, it’s best to go for somewhere a bit to the side, but not too far or you will find yourself looking at the dancers’ backs.

 

 

[LinMM]

It might be best to start saving up to see BRB nutcracker in Birmingham next year as I don’t think the experience will be quite the same at the RAH! 

I think some ballets work better there than others and Nutcracker for me needs that more intimate feel. 
It’s possible if you live in London to do the trip to Birmingham all in one day if you go to a matinee and the Hippodrome is a very close to Birmingham New street station a five minute walk or so. 

[alison]

It's normally very easy to do London-Birmingham in a day, as long as you go for a matinee - unless Chiltern Trains go and screw up the service again!  Hopefully Avanti - or whatever replaces them - will mean the New Street service will be better by next Christmas, too.

[San Perregrino]

The uncertainty and anxiety surrounding trains from London to Birmingham this past year, particularly Avanti, hasn’t made what ought to be a no-brainer trip down to see BRB ‘at home’ an attractive nor an enticing prospect. As a result I have had to steel myself to proceed with my plans which have happily included trips to watch BRB’s Romeo & Juliet, Don Quixote and finally this week, it’s Nutcracker in their Hippodrome home.
Each trip, on the actual day, the trains have behaved impeccably on time and without delay so I’m glad I put my worries aside and went ahead. The Hippodrome is adjacent to Chinatown so a great meal is guaranteed on arrival as a reward to any intrepid traveller.

Coming at the end of a week when I had already seen the RB Nutcracker and been privileged to have met and chatted with SIr Peter Wright, it was hard not to be hugely excited at the prospect of finally seeing the BRB production. Sharing much of the same choreography (at least to my untrained eye), the RB Nutcracker tends towards understated elegance and glittering simple sophistication that draws you into a world of magic allowing the piece to breathe, expand and the dancers take centre stage. By contrast, BRB revamped Nutcracker is bold, brash and colourful, the sets almost screaming for attention from the stage to the point of overwhelming the dance content.  Both productions are highly enjoyable. Full credit to Sir Peter Wright that it certainly isn’t a case of if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen the other. The snowflake scene at the end of Act 1 and the start of Act 2 in themselves definitely warrant a trip to Birmingham.
 

[Jan McNulty]

9 minutes ago, PeterS said:

Sharing much of the same choreography (at least to my untrained eye), the RB Nutcracker 

 

Where you say the choreography looks the same do you mainly mean in the national dances in Act 2?  I gather that over the years SPW has amended the RB production's choreography to match those of the BRB production.

 

It is a total amazement to me that SPW created both productions.  I think the BRB is the best in the universe.  I saw the RB production as a newbie ballet watcher in January 1986 and if it was the first ballet I had ever seen I never would have gone back!  As I have watched more and more ballet over the years I thought I may have changed so I went to see a cinema broadcast about 5 years ago and even though a favourite dancer was appearing in it I still absolutely loathed it.

[Odyssey]

Like Janet, I have had the pleasure of seeing the BRB’s Nutcracker over many years - I was privileged to see it in its first run and can recall the thrill I felt, and continue to feel, at the climactic moments of the transformation scene. I have never known an audience not respond, with a spontaneous burst of applause, to that precise coming together of the stirring climax in the music with the choreographed moment, brilliantly realised in the staging. ( I’ve deliberately left this vague for anyone who hasn’t yet seen how this production conceives the transformation). I could list a whole range of ways in which this production doesn’t disappoint, but delivers what seems to me a perfect vision of this ballet - and I have seen many of the major productions since the 1970’s.
Does the production design dominate the ballet? I have never thought so, but as I’m now in South Devon I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the newly refurbished production. I can well imagine the bold colours and swirling design for the Kingdom of Sweets is pretty eye catching.  But at the heart of this production is some lovely choreographed dancing  - the Snowflakes, which PeterS notes, is a lesson in how to create beautiful shapes and patterns. The cherry on the cake is the quality of the dancing that BRB regularly achieves which permeates through from the wonderful principals to the corps. 
Having read the reviews regarding the loving attention given to the refurbishment, I’m definitely booking a couple of days in Brum next year. 
 

[San Perregrino]

3 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

Where you say the choreography looks the same do you mainly mean in the national dances in Act 2?  I gather that over the years SPW has amended the RB production's choreography to match those of the BRB production.

 

It is a total amazement to me that SPW created both productions.  I think the BRB is the best in the universe.  I saw the RB production as a newbie ballet watcher in January 1986 and if it was the first ballet I had ever seen I never would have gone back!  As I have watched more and more ballet over the years I thought I may have changed so I went to see a cinema broadcast about 5 years ago and even though a favourite dancer was appearing in it I still absolutely loathed it.

Both RB and BRB Nutcrackers are hugely enjoyable to me because the later one isn’t simply a clone of the former. It appeared to my untrained eye that the BRB choreography was perhaps simpler than that of the RB and had maybe been devised for a smaller company/smaller stage with less depth and breadth of dancer? Strikingly beautiful as they are, I would have to say that, for me, the BRB sets smothered the clarity of, and at times even clashed or competed with the choreography. I felt the same about Coppélia earlier this year.

The two performances I attended had been hit by a wave of company sickness and hence short notice substitutions. As a result some parts were ragged and uneven and it would be unfair to comment further. As I said previously hugely enjoyable nonetheless and I commend both productions to Forum readers. 

[Jan McNulty]

4 minutes ago, PeterS said:

Both RB and BRB Nutcrackers are hugely enjoyable to me because the later one isn’t simply a clone of the former. It appeared to my untrained eye that the BRB choreography was perhaps simpler than that of the RB and had maybe been devised for a smaller company/smaller stage with less depth and breadth of dancer? Strikingly beautiful as they are, I would have to say that, for me, the BRB sets smothered the clarity of, and at times even clashed or competed with the choreography. I felt the same about Coppélia earlier this year.

The two performances I attended had been hit by a wave of company sickness and hence short notice substitutions. As a result some parts were ragged and uneven and it would be unfair to comment further. As I said previously hugely enjoyable nonetheless and I commend both productions to Forum readers. 

 

But which bits of choreography did you think were the same?  I do know from past comments that SPW has been changing some of the RB act 2 variations to the ones he had already choreographed for BRB.

 

Reading both threads it looks as though both BRB and RB are now using the same new Arabian dance (which I really enjoyed).  Alys Shee danced all 3 performances that I saw this week with great sensuality and with different partners too.

[alison]

9 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

But which bits of choreography did you think were the same?  I do know from past comments that SPW has been changing some of the RB act 2 variations to the ones he had already choreographed for BRB.

 

And he's also changed the BRB Chinese dance to match the RB's one now.  So that's two loads of dancers who must be cursing Marcelino Sambé, who originated what I understand is now a very difficult role!

[San Perregrino]

21 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

But which bits of choreography did you think were the same?  I do know from past comments that SPW has been changing some of the RB act 2 variations to the ones he had already choreographed for BRB.

 

Reading both threads it looks as though both BRB and RB are now using the same new Arabian dance (which I really enjoyed).  Alys Shee danced all 3 performances that I saw this week with great sensuality and with different partners too.

Sadly i don’t have the kind of memory that would enable me to detail individual elements for comparison or comment. My overall impression was one of “same but different” as if the RB choreography had been adapted/evolved into the BRB version to suit the constraints of a smaller company/stage. Nor, as a relative newbie to the repeat watching of ballets do I have the background knowledge to know where an element originated and whether or not some of BRB has been reverse engineered into RB since the original production was created. It doesn’t really matter to me so long as the steps dictated are danced well on the day/night. 

[Jan McNulty]

12 hours ago, alison said:

 

And he's also changed the BRB Chinese dance to match the RB's one now.  So that's two loads of dancers who must be cursing Marcelino Sambé, who originated what I understand is now a very difficult role!

 

I thought they were done at the same time as with the Arabian this year.

[Lizbie1]

22 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

I thought they were done at the same time as with the Arabian this year.

 

I *think* - but I could be wrong - that the making of the new version if the Chinese dance was featured in the Dancing the Nutcracker documentary a few years back (2016 says Google).

[Odyssey]

3 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

I *think* - but I could be wrong - that the making of the new version if the Chinese dance was featured in the Dancing the Nutcracker documentary a few years back (2016 says Google).

Yes, it was. But the Arabian dance was revised for two dancers last year. 
https://www.classicfm.com/artists/royal-ballet/alters-arabian-dance-nutcracker-scene/

 

[Jan McNulty]

There's a fabulous photograph of BRB's Miles Gilliver as King Rat "fencing" with his Paralympian Gold Medallist brother Piers outside the Royal Albert Hall.  It is the third picture down.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/news-in-pictures-tuesday-december-13-2022-m75mf2x8w

[LinMM]

That’s a terrific picture Jan! 

[Ian Macmillan]

Should anyone be having paywall trouble with the link Janet provided to this morning's Times news pictures with the dramatic King Rat photo (3rd one down), you could try this one with a Share Token that should get you in.  Mind you, experience suggests it runs out after a couple of weeks or so:

 

News in pictures: Tuesday December 13, 2022

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3e12091c-7a30-11ed-8486-22782b7fe87b?shareToken=ca73a1e95c78ba568ff0b2f6f1ee5e9b

 

 

 

[jmhopton]

Thanks Ian.  Both links worked for me.

I also love the photo a bit further down with the man carrying his golden retriever to a charity Christmas church service. 

[Mary]

Great Rat photo. I see there's a bluebird further down too....

[Jan McNulty]

Birmingham Royal Ballet has put a reel about the photoshoot on the company IG account:

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmMtYuePsum/