PREVIEW
What: Nutcracker (Royal Winnipeg Ballet with the Victoria Symphony)
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Also, Nanaimo’s Port Theatre on Monday and Tuesday.
Tickets: $29 to $99 (children’s prices available), 250-386-6121 or dancevictoria.com
Some years ago, Andre Lewis strolled past Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings and noticed the giant clock in the Peace Tower.
It reminded Lewis — who is artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet — of The Nutcracker. The ballet typically features a grandfather clock.
That, in turn, gave him an idea.
“I said: ‘Why don’t we do a version [of The Nutcracker] that’s set in Canada?’ ”
Lewis pitched his patriotic concept to choreographers Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon. And in 1999, the Canuck Nutcracker (the title is shortened from The Nutcracker) hit the stage for the first time.
Nutcracker features polar bears, a grizzly bear, Mounties, Hudson’s Bay blankets and a doll’s house resembling the Parliament Buildings. There’s even a hockey game. And this year, there’s a whole new wrinkle: the inclusion of four reindeer, not to mention a reindeer understudy.
Sacrilege, you say? Don’t worry. Tchaikovsky’s famous score, played for Royal Theatre performances by the Victoria Symphony, remains intact. In further keeping with tradition, Clara defeats the Mouse King, the Sugar Plum Fairy makes her usual magic and the journeys to the Land of the Snow and the Kingdom of Sweets still occur.
This week, Lewis visited Victoria to oversee Nutcracker’s installation into the Royal Theatre. It’s a big operation: the two-hour (without intermission) ballet uses 50 child performers from 14 local dance schools, a 45-piece orchestra and a 35-member backstage crew.
Lewis, interviewed in a downtown hotel lobby, admitted he was a touch nervous when the all-Canadian Nutcracker debuted.
“It was iffy. We thought: Will it work or not?” he said.
It did work. The new Nutcracker replaced a previous version of the ballet choreographed for the RWB by John Neumeier. The Neumeier adaptation of the original 19th-century ballet had been performed for 27 years. It was a long-running tradition that had gotten stale. The sets were deteriorating; interest had fallen off. In Winnipeg, the RWB performed the Neumeier Nutcracker just once every two years because less-than-brisk ticket sales didn’t warrant an annual run.
By contrast, the all-Canadian Nutcracker is an audience favourite that’s performed every year in Winnipeg. This season, it’s touring to Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver and Fayetteville, Arkansas. (Lewis said he was worried the Canadian theme wouldn’t translate well in the U.S.; however, the Arkansans loved it.)
He has been artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet since 1995. Lewis originally joined as a dancer in 1979 after graduating from the company’s ballet school.
It was The Nutcracker that first got him interested in dance as a child. Lewis grew up in Gatineau, Que., and his sister was in a production of The Nutcracker mounted by her Ottawa dance school. More boys were required, so their mother volunteered her son.
As with so many dancers whose first exposure to ballet is The Nutcracker, that experience hooked the 12-year-old on the art form for life.
“I enjoyed the movement to music,” Lewis recalled, smiling at the memory.
“And the opportunity to portray emotions.”
