AVOIDING STEREOTYPES IN TANDY BEAL’S ‘NUTCRACKER’

You won’t see lots of tutus, tiaras and toe shoes in Tandy Beal’s “The Nutcracker.”

Instead, you’ll see jugglers, acrobats, roller skaters, real Spanish dancers and punk-rock mice.

“I wanted to sidestep the stereotyped ideas we all have after seeing umpteen ‘Nutcrackers,’ ” Beal, a noted Santa Cruz-based choreographer, said recently.

“The story line is basically the same, but there is not as much dancing. Instead, it’s very visual. It’s a big theater show.”

More than 60 people, including children, are scheduled to perform in the production at 8 tonight, through Sunday, at Cal State Fullerton. A principal role will be danced by Beal, 38, and her father, actor John Beal (“The Waltons,” “Kojak”), will be cast as Drosselmeyer. The two will be performing together for the first time.

Beal said that for all her innovations, she followed the Tchaikovsky score faithfully and tried to preserve the nostalgia associated with performing “The Nutcracker” during the holidays.

She said she could not remember the original story when she began to work on the production in 1979, because she hadn’t seen the ballet since her childhood.

“So I didn’t know what was supposed to happen when,” she said. “But in Tchaikovsky’s music, it’s all there. I knew this must be the raising of the tree; this must be the mouse battle. Each piece told me what to do.”

So there will be the usual party, with children, in Act I--only the time and place will be indefinite: Women will be dressed in long skirts; men will wear tuxedos.

Clara, of course, will fall in love with the Nutcracker-turned-Prince, as usual. But Beal resisted choreographing ballet-type lifts for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier in their pas de deux.

“I went the opposite way and made it a dance of veils and capes of many, many colors,” she said. “I made her an ethereal fairy and the dance about that quality, not dancerly stuff.”

Even so, Beal has tinkered with the work far less than some recent stagings which reflect the dark implications of the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story upon which the ballet is based.

“This is not about psychological overtones,” Beal said. “I wanted the spirit of the holiday season to be the communication.

“My Drosselmeyer is charming and eccentric. My Clara is a young adolescent and this is her first love. And being who I am, I let the dream continue at the end. Clara just floats off into the clouds and you can make up your own ending. But it’s a happy ending. It’s a little ambiguous, but it’s soft.”

Beal is known for her modern dance choreography, but felt that describing the work as a modern dance version was inadequate.

“I think my own work is not modern dance or anything,” she said. “My home is theater and my tools are dance. What’s more important than what kind of movement people will see is that the work is theatrical. My real thrust was to have a spirit of exuberance.”