DANCE REVIEW : Meg Gurin, Pascal Benichou in Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’

In the Joffrey Ballet version of “The Nutcracker” (at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion through New Year’s Eve), people from the Christmas party keep turning up in revealing new guises. Clara’s parents become the majestic Snow King and Queen. Her restless brother, Fritz, returns as a virtual winter whirlwind, and the nice young man who gave her a box of candy is transformed into the dream-prince who leads her to Candyland.

Once there, however, he becomes the property of the Sugar Plum Fairy--and this seemed especially unfortunate on Friday afternoon, because Pascal Benichou looked so happy and comfortable with Mary Barton (again cast as Clara) and so relatively stiff with Meg Gurin (dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy for the first time in Southern California).

New to the Joffrey, Benichou attracted notice at San Francisco Ballet for his curly headed good looks, his elegance of bearing and his secure technique. To these qualities he added warmth and classical fluency on Friday, though he couldn’t manage the lifts without strain and it was clear that the partnership with Gurin hadn’t yet become second nature.

But he proved the real thing--a genuine cavalier, just as Gurin looked like a born ballerina. Regal, serene, beautifully proportioned, she danced with a generosity of phrasing that reflected the grand manner of the score.

Her delicate pointe work in the solo also matched the accompaniment perfectly, but on the whole, Gurin’s distinction Friday came less from either musicality or the articulation of steps than the unfolding of line. Not just displaying it, but making each change of shape into a gleaming link in a chain of revelations.

In an otherwise largely familiar cast, Carole Valleskey danced the Chocolate variation as if it were some great joke that she wanted to share (“Look, everyone, I’m Spanish! “). Giving a matinee “Nutcracker” the sense of a special occasion is not something you’d expect from just any divertissement dancer but, then, Valleskey always makes a difference.