BALLET REVIEW : ‘Nutcracker’ Season Opens in San Diego

Even before the Thanksgiving turkey went into the oven, San Francisco Ballet inaugurated the Southern California sugarplum season by opening a seven-performance run of its sumptuous, traditional “Nutcracker” Wednesday at the Civic Theatre here.

As designed by Jose Varona, this 1986 production looked like an expensive Christmas card but, despite occasional lapses and moments of confusion, it played like a nostalgic valentine to the family values and simpler pleasures of our grandparents.

Credited to the late Lew Christensen, with additional choreography and staging by Willam Christensen, Helgi Tomasson and Anatole Vilzak, the version seemed oddly reactionary in some creative respects. Recent productions of 19th-Century ballets have invariably added dance opportunities for the leading males; however, this one cut the cavalier’s only solo and moved the ballerina’s showpiece variation to early in Act II.

Other sequences ignored the descriptive content of Tchaikovsky’s score: We heard the mouse-theme, for example, long before any of the giant rodents appeared. And, though Little Clara provides the ballet with its emotional context and unity, she became increasingly lost in this staging--obliterated by the dancing hordes and special effects.

When those effects worked perfectly Wednesday--when one of Varona’s elaborate painted vistas melted into another or when dancers materialized out of thin air--this was indeed a joyful and triumphant “Nutcracker,” one to inspire childlike wonder in everybody.

But when a front snow-curtain snagged--leaving Timothy Fox and Jamie Zimmerman to dance the first major classical choreography of the evening behind a huge clump of tangled yardage--the cost of relying on technology and spectacle grew too high.

Even after the curtain was hauled away (to relieved applause), Fox looked rattled, but Zimmerman danced the Snow Queen with the technical smoothness and personal serenity that has become San Francisco Ballet style in the Tomasson era.

As the centerpiece (Butterfly) in the “Waltz of the Flowers,” Cynthia Drayer shared these qualities--as did Pascale Leroy (opposite a magisterial Christopher Boatwright) as the Arabian houri and Ludmila Lopukhova as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Whether their choreography proved virtuosic, lyrical or gymnastic, these women and, indeed, the entire corps de ballet understood the sense of calm at the center of classicism, the secret of ballerina radiance.

Mikko Nissinen (Lopukhova’s cavalier) also displayed great elegance and, in the coda of their pas de deux, power, too: a Tomasson-style danseur noble. Finally, for those who like male dancing based on brash stunts, there were Andre Reyes, David McNaughton and colleagues in the athletic Chinese and Russian divertissements.

As a bald, hook-nosed, dandified Drosselmeyer, Val Caniparoli presided over the Christmas party with eccentric flair; as Clara, Tiffany Billings led the large continent of children expertly. This is a company that has been dancing “The Nutcracker” longer than any other in America (they produced the first complete “Nutcracker” of this country in 1944), and virtually nothing is left to chance.

If conductor Jean-Louis LeRoux never shaped the score distinctively, he drew fine playing from the San Diego Symphony. Despite a singing credit in the house program, the Snow Scene vocalise proved voiceless.

Performances continue (twice daily, with different casts) through Sunday evening.

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