‘Sweeties’ Reinvents ‘The Nutcracker’

For Southland dance audiences, much of the fun in watching David Bintley’s “Nutcracker Sweeties” may lie in comparing his tongue-in-cheek divertissement to other, more familiar Christmas choreographies.

Telecast tonight on Ovation cable in a 1997 performance by Bintley’s Birmingham Royal Ballet, the piece uses the same Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn jazz arrangements of Tchaikovsky that Donald Byrd made the core of his “Harlem Nutcracker,” but it lacks the extra music that Byrd commissioned to expand his project into a full-evening dance-drama.

So right away, you can compare Bintley to Byrd--and, of course, to “Nutcracker” dances in any number of traditional versions.

Moreover, because Bintley sets the ballet during World War II (with the TV adaptation featuring him as a soldier hearing the music on a car radio), you can judge his reinvention of ‘40s social dances against those created by his countryman Matthew Bourne in the Blitz-era Adventures in Motion Pictures’ “Cinderella” seen locally this year.

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Directed by Peter Mumford, “Nutcracker Sweeties” unfolds as a series of show-dance specialty numbers for ballerinas pretending to be American, Russian, Spanish, etc.

Nobody, however, outdances Leticia Muller in her African-influenced Arabian dance (backed by a quasi-Turkish corps), though Monica Zammora as Sugar Rum Cherry manages a predatory slink-and-stalk solo with enough teasing sensuality to make you wonder what the young Lauren Bacall would have looked like on pointe.

Set designer Peter J. Davison adds variety to his skyscraper backdrop through a number of neon signs and giant animal cutouts, while Jaspor Conran’s costumes provide such parodistic novelties as a “Chinese” dancer sporting a Japanese hairdo and long Thai fingernails.

Paul Murphy conducts the Echoes of Ellington ensemble expertly.

* “Nutcracker Sweeties” will be shown tonight at 6 on Ovation cable.