DANCE / CHRIS PASLES : The Suite Smell of Success : It Has Taken a While for ‘Nutcracker’ to Come Out of Its Shell

More than 230 productions of the “Nutcracker” ballet will be danced in the United States this year, the 100th anniversary of the perennial holiday favorite. These productions are expected to draw nearly $46 million in box office revenues from more than 2 million customers, according to the current issue of Dance Magazine.

Little did the producers of the original “Nutcracker” dream of such popularity. In fact, the first production--seen at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1892--”was not a success, and it was a real tragedy for Tchaikovsky,” says Oleg Vinogradov, artistic director of the Kirov Ballet, the direct descendant of the Maryinsky company. (The Kirov is dancing a new production of the “Nutcracker” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa through Sunday.)

“After ‘Nutcracker,’ Tchaikovsky didn’t want to compose music for ballet again,” Vinogradov continued at his Costa Mesa hotel on Monday. Indeed, within a year, the composer was dead.

Vinogradov thinks the music for the ballet reflects ominous events. “It is full of tragedy,” he said. “It is very close to the Sixth Symphony (which is called the “Pathetique” Symphony). It was a very hard time for Tchaikovsky, and everything was reflected in this music, in the two adagios, especially.”

The first critics who reviewed “Nutcracker” generally praised the music but savaged the story and choreography. Vinogradov believes the ballet failed because choreographer Lev Ivanov, who inherited the assignment after the great Marius Petipa fell ill, “did not have enough material to realize his ideas” and because the first two acts were performed by children.

“It was a great pity that children danced two acts,” Vinogradov said. “The choreography is not at a very high level because children’s possibilities are narrow. Only the last act and the Snowflakes Waltz were performed by the dancers, and it is just here that Ivanov reveals himself as a true choreographer of genius.

“If you compare the composition of the Snowflakes Waltz and the second scene of ‘Swan Lake,’ it’s absolutely clear that all these pieces were done by one and the same choreographer.”

Tinkering with the choreography began almost immediately, Vinogradov said. But even so, the Ivanov version was danced in Russia for about 20 years. Then Fyodor Lopukhov created an avant-garde version, consistent with the progressive experimentation permitted for a short time after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Lopukhov’s version “reflected the ethics--the Constructivism, the Futurism, the Cubism--of the time,” Vinogradov said. “The scenario was nearly the same, but it was performed with elements of acrobatics, with formal movements, and it had nothing to do with the lyric romanticism of Tchaikovsky’s music. . . . It was not on the stage too much.”

Meanwhile, the Ivanov version survived in various adaptations as, after the revolution, many Russian dancers and choreographers emigrated. Nikolai Sergeyev, the former regisseur of the Maryinsky, for instance, took his written accounts of the ballet to London, in a special shorthand called Stepanov notation.

In 1934, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet produced the “Nutcracker” for the first time outside of Russia, based on this notated score (which, about 10 years ago, showed up in a London auction house. “I appealed to our government to buy it,” Vinogradov said. “But they thought I was crazy. ‘Who could spend the money?’ they said. I don’t know what happened to it.”)

Another Russian emigre--George Balanchine--created a version for the New York City Ballet in 1954, based on his memories of dancing the “Nutcracker” as a youth in the Maryinsky company.

Back in the Soviet Union, in 1934 Vasili Vainonen had created his own version, and it is that version, Vinogradov said, that remains “the basis of all the versions in the world today.”

“Whether by Baryshnikov or Nureyev or by many other choreographers, the foundation is Vainonen’s version. It is the most successful of all the versions that exist.” It is in three acts, with a full intermission before the Transformation Scene in which Masha, the young heroine, falls asleep, sees the Christmas tree grow magically, helps the Nutcracker defeat the mice, and departs with him through a snowstorm to the Kingdom of the Sweets.

According to Vinogradov, Vainonen was the first person to choreograph the mouse battle. “He organized it and made it rhythmical. There was too much pantomime in Ivanov’s version. He also was the first to create a small pas de deux for music before the snow scene.” Previously, Vinogradov said, this music had been played during the intermission.

Vainonen also introduced four extra cavaliers to assist the prince in the last act’s grand pas de deux with the Sugar Plum Fairy. Vinogradov considers the innovation “brilliant” because the four cavaliers constantly “raise the princess to the heights and it seems as if she’s flying in the air. I think it’s wonderful.”

The ballet remains a Christmas favorite in Russia, although there “you see it all the time--during the Christmas holidays, during the spring holidays and even at graduation performances,” Vinogradov said.

However, for more than 30 years, only students have been dancing it in Russia, he added. At the Maryinsky, it has been done by members of the Vagonova Academy, the Kirov’s dancing school; the main Kirov company has not done the work because of the “sheer size of the Kirov repertory,” Vinogradov explained.

“The version we have brought (to Costa Mesa) is the first production which is performed by grown-up artists, without any help from children, not even in the first act,” he said.

* The Kirov Ballet dances “The Nutcracker” tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $14 to $55. (714) 556-2787. Festival Ballet Theatre will dance “The Nutcracker” Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Huntington Beach High School auditorium, 1905 Main St., Huntington Beach. $9 to $10. (714) 962-5440. Ballet Pacifica will dance “The Nutcracker” Dec. 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Dec. 18 through 23 at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. $12 to $15. (714) 642-9275. More productions will be listed in Thursday’s OC Live! and in Sunday’s Calendar.