BALLET REVIEW : ‘Nutcracker’: Kirov Tries Again

Another day, another “Nutcracker.” In this case, another muddled “Nutcracker.”

On Tuesday, the beleaguered Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg continued its brief, sold-out stand at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with a new set of principals for what purports to be Vassily Vainonen’s 1934 version of Tchaikovsky’s yuletide crowd-pleaser. On this occasion, the company also managed to smooth some of the technical wrinkles that had marred the opening performance.

The basic values, however, hardly changed. For all its fairy-tale glitz, the uncredited staging still looks tacky. The narrative devices still revel in confusion. And much of the choreography seems even more gimmicky or clumsy or unmusical or dramatically irrelevant when seen a second time.

In the anticlimactic case of the grand pas de deux--now a catch-and-throw contest for five athletic cavaliers, with the ballerina masquerading as the ball--the choreography actually manages to be gimmicky and clumsy and unmusical and dramatically irrelevant, all at once. Echoes of the Sleeping Beauty’s Rose Adagio cannot mitigate the silliness.

Heading the second of four Costa Mesa casts, Irina Chistiakova took over Masha’s spangled tutu from Zhanna Ayupova, who, following principles of balletic democracy, was temporarily demoted to incidental-trio duty in the last act. Chistiakova exuded elegant fragility, if not much childlike innocence. A strong and lithe technician, she sustained a deceptive aura of daintiness under trying conditions.

Like Ayupova, she settled for an all-purpose smile in place of a poignant characterization. That deficiency may be a matter of contemporary Kirov habit.

Someone should tell her, however, that sweet little girls who fall in love with wooden toys in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Deutschland are unlikely to sport long--yes, Virginia, very long--painted fingernails. Herr Doktor Stahlbaum, Masha’s Biedermeier papa, would never permit an indulgence so vain, or so anachronistic.

Alexander Gulyayev succeeded the firebrand Igor Zelensky as a distinctly muted, nearly noble Nutcracker Prince. His elevation wasn’t exactly spectacular, and he chose simple maneuvers where his predecessor had piled showy complexity on showy complexity. Still, the youthful, long-legged Gulyayev has a good line and a useful sense of dignity. The Kirov has sent us worse heroes.

Many of the faces changed in the caractere divertissements; the cumulative impact did not. It may be significant that the most memorable, and most spontaneous, innovation involved an accident: During his Arab-doll solo, Alexei Semenov began to spin out of control and ended up kicking a hole in the Stahlbaums’ preposterous modern-plastic Christmas tree. This dancer obviously is a born critic.

Pyotr Rusanov--at least we think it was Pyotr Rusanov--returned as the rather bland and benign Drosselmeyer. Oddly enough, he also returned to kick up his booted heels in the Trepak, even though Gennady Babanin was credited with that folksy assignment.

At Kirov performances, one often can’t tell the players even with a program.