DANCE REVIEW : The Joffrey Ballet’s Problematic Holiday Chestnut

No longer a member of the Music Center family, the Joffrey Ballet returned to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday as a tenant, opening a 16-performance run of its familiar, problematic 1987 staging of “The Nutcracker.”

Ironically, this “Nutcracker” puts a premium on everything the Joffrey avoided before it became a Music Center resident company: tutu-and-tiara classicism, grandiose spectacle, backdated sentimentality. In the process, the reasons for the company’s importance in American dance become invisible, exchanged for Christmas cash flow. You might even argue that the production represents the company’s sellout to the Music Center’s notion of ballet--certainly the only kind of ballet this cultural institution has successfully merchandised.

For starters, there’s plenty of smoke, snow and glitter-dust on view but no choreographic vision unifying the high-ticket production effects devised by Oliver Smith (scenery), John David Ridge (costumes), Kermit Love (special character design) and Thomas Skelton (lighting). You can’t even find a consistent approach to 19th-Century style.

Instead, the Joffrey provides a kind of balletic variety show with, sooner or later, everything from glamorous Ballet Russe kitsch to impressionistic Gerald Arpino corps-surges imposed on Tchaikovsky’s beloved score.

Whenever that score won’t accommodate the staging’s peculiarities, the company patches together whatever accompaniment it needs: some extra bars in the parents’ dance and lots of clock chimes in Act I, plus plenty of inserts in Act II so that Drosselmeyer has enough time to hurl his cape.

Robert Joffrey wanted to move “The Nutcracker” to Victorian-era America--though some of the design details come straight from the 1892 St. Petersburg staging (the cabbage and pie in Act I, for instance, from which the doll-dancers emerge). Joffrey also attempted to link the Christmas party scene with Clara’s dream by introducing images and characters early on and then bringing them back in fantasy guises: Clara’s parents as the Snow monarchs, for example.

Unfortunately, the integrity and essential mellowness of this concept can’t survive the clashes of style in the choreography or the chilly emphasis on speed in Allen Lewis’ conducting. Moreover, in its fourth local visit, the staging often loses focus for entire scenes, with energetic character schtick sometimes becoming more prominent than major plot points.

Glen Harris’ manic Drosselmeyer may be the worst offender--a relentless compendium of self-aggrandizing effects without a story to tell. At the opposite extreme: Tom Mossbrucker as the Nutcracker Prince--a reliable partner when the dancing begins but listless as an actor and inclined to flash the emptiest smile since David Duke’s.

Tyler Walters has settled into his danseur noble responsibilities this season well enough to make his Snow duet with Deborah Dawn securely gracious and occasionally even majestic. Carl Corry ornaments their dancing expertly as the fleet, buoyant Snow Prince. And Rita Martinez looks suitably wide-eyed (if a bit tall for the role) as Clara.

In the Candyland divertissement, Pierre Lockett slinked memorably through the Arabian kootch duet with Julie Janus, the Trepak exuded quasi-competitive flamboyance as danced by Linda Bechtold, Alexander Brady, Brent Phillips and Joseph Schnell, while in the Spanish solo Beatriz Rodriguez reminded everyone how genuine warmth can redeem lackluster choreography.

So can genuine musicality, but most of the Joffrey dancers hear only the tempo of Tchaikovsky’s score. Tina LeBlanc, however, reflects deeper values, drawing the audience into the emotion of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s adagio with an inventive sense of rubato and making amplitude of scale central to her refined technique. In her solo, the celesta seems to call to her, and, just by listening, she takes the production into a new dimension.

In the curtain calls, an unannounced celebrity joins the cast: Mickey Mouse wearing a “Nutcracker” uniform, courtesy of Disneyland. For those following the Joffrey’s shifting fortunes, Mickey’s participation (as gift-bearer for LeBlanc) recalls how central Diane Disney Miller has been to the company’s comeback from its 1990 fiscal/administrative crisis. If the Joffrey’s recent past has been tied to the Music Center’s schedule and priorities, its future in Los Angeles may well depend on Disney generosity.