MUSIC & DANCE REVIEWS : Tcherkassky Essays Clara in ‘Nutcracker’

With characteristic warmth and generosity in movement, Marianna Tcherkassky danced her first Clara in the new Kevin McKenzie/American Ballet Theatre “Nutcracker” on Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The interpretation was detailed and credible, whether in her initial sweet sunniness, the fright at the changes in dimension during the Transformation Scene, distress at Drosselmeyer’s sobbing over the tale of the Hard Nut, or numerous opportunities to suggest childlike wonder at the events around her.

She danced with mercurial lyricism, and her whole-hearted abandon in the many airy flights suggested the rock-solid security and rapport she must have felt with her Nutcracker Prince, Johan Renvall, also dancing his role for the first time in this production.

The gifted, expressive Renvall, who has given us haunting performances of other roles, here executed his largely thankless porteur duties with strength and conscientious caution and, less typically, with smiling generalities.

Just as Tcherkassky did not convey ideal crispness and brilliance in the Sugar Plum Fairy Variation, Renvall looked dutiful in the Sugar Plum Cavalier Variation (McKenzie has reassigned both sections to these characters), though he danced with explosive and clean scissor-beats that ended in text-book clean landings.

Dancers in other principal roles have been previously reviewed.

Charles Barker conducted the Pacific Symphony with marginally less hectic drive but with the same slackness in tension and indifference to the architecture of the score exhibited by his predecessor.