Pointing to Christmas

Once upon a time, weary parents heaved a resigned sigh when the Christmas decorations went up the day after Thanksgiving; now the sighs are deeper and come sooner, as the garish ads and incentives begin to appear right after Halloween. But just when consumerism seems likely to swamp us, along comes the sweet, gentle “Nutcracker,” which is all about the true magic of gift-giving and gift-getting.

“The Nutcracker,” in all its quaint, sugary splendor, reminds us that there are ordinary gifts like silk ties, golfing gloves, miniature trains and Easy-Bake Ovens, Cabbage Patch Kids and Tickle Me Elmos, and then there are the gifts we are given by more mysterious forces: the gift of a loving home, of a crystal-clear day or of a child’s budding talent for the dance.

When Tchaikovsky’s 1891 ballet had its U.S. premiere in the 1940s, it received lukewarm reviews from dance critics, who thought the music was lovely but that the opportunities it created for dancers were exceedingly bland. How surprised they would have been to learn that, some 70 years later, “The Nutcracker” has come to embody the holiday spirit for hundreds of thousands of families across the nation, especially for the those whose ballet-crazy daughters go to sleep at night dreaming of someday dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

This year there are at least 14 productions of “The Nutcracker” to choose from in the region, from the American Ballet Theater’s professional version to productions mounted by ballet school students and their parents and teachers. (And if you think the soccer mom is a fanatically devoted creature, you have yet to meet a ballet dad.)

For the children involved in these productions, and all the Cub Scouts, Brownies and Indian Guides who flock to see their brothers and sisters onstage, “The Nutcracker” is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. The details of the plot vary from production to production, but at its root is a simple tale: Clara receives the gift of a wooden nutcracker from her godfather Drosselmeyer, and the toy sparks her imagination and opens her heart. When her pesky little brother Fritz breaks it, Clara is brokenhearted, but at night she dreams that the nutcracker has come to life -- looking a lot like Herr Drosselmeyer’s handsome nephew, by the way. Together, Clara and the Nutcracker Prince defeat the evil Mouse King and go on to take the fairyland equivalent of a United Nations goodwill tour through lands populated by Russians, Chinese, Spaniards and other assorted cultural groups (including, of course, the land of candy, which is ruled by the graceful Sugar Plum Fairy). Clara, who went to sleep a child, wakes from her dream as a young woman.

For the young girls who dance the role of Clara, “The Nutcracker” is also a rite of passage. Hilary Heinke, 13, has been cast as Clara in Ballet Pacifica’s production this year. She started dancing at age 3 and was a mouse in her first “Nutcracker.”

To her, the story and the happy chaos it brings to her life every year are “magical.” “Every year when you audition, you dream of getting a certain part, and it’s the same as the story of Clara’s dream,” Hilary says. “You feel just like you’re there in Clara’s shoes. When she gets the nutcracker, it’s like getting your solo.”

For Hilary, the visions of sugarplums dancing in her head are as real as any GameCube or Xbox, and much more soul-satisfying. Hilary’s counterpart at the SoCal Dance Theatre is a 13-year-old named Hailey Davis. Her single mother, Terri, is an operations assistant with the sheriff’s department. Terri grew up in a large, financially struggling family in Long Beach and never expected that her daughter would be a ballerina.

Hailey practices for an hour and a half every day, then comes home and dances some more to a videotape from the previous year’s production. “Sometimes I dance without music,” she says. “Wherever I am, whenever I feel like it, I dance.”

“It’s a way of life,” Terri adds. “It’s changed our whole family. I just enjoy riding on her coattails. Sometimes I can’t believe how much I know about ballet.”

Across town at the Westside Ballet School’s hectic Saturday afternoon rehearsal, Jim Brunet, one of the ballet dads, has been through the Clara experience and beyond. “After Clara comes the zone of death,” he says. “Clara is the last big role they can play that is not on pointe. From there the real work begins when they get their toe shoes and disappear into the anonymity of the corps de ballet.”

At Westside and other ballet schools, parents must commit to many hours of volunteer work, sewing costumes, producing fliers and selling cookies. Brunet is handling the program as well as making a behind-the-scenes video. His 15-year-old daughter, Gillian, has been dancing at Westside Ballet for 10 years.

“We spend all our lives here,” Gillian says, just as an impish little girl dressed as a boy in corduroy knickers and a porkpie hat leaps into her arms. “This is Indigo,” Gillian says, laughing. “I play her mother.”

The girls in the studio are affectionate with one another during rehearsal, but only one can land the coveted role of Clara -- or two, if the role is alternated between performances -- and the agony of competition is said to be fierce in early September.

At Westside Ballet, younger girls have even been known to grapple over costumes believed to confer luck on the wearer. A certain yellow dress has been worn by three girls who went on to dance the Clara role, and it is much sought after among the 10- and 11-year-olds.

But the competition begins even earlier. “There’s one very tiny mouse who is left onstage alone after the king gets killed, and he cries onstage all by himself,” explains the school’s artistic director, Yvonne Mounsey. “The little ones, they all want to be the crying mouse.”

Mounsey, who was one of George Balanchine’s original dancers at the New York City Ballet, shakes her head again and again while a Spanish dancer tries out a move, then simply steps in and demonstrates how it’s done. Mounsey is 84 years old.This is the 33rd year in a row she has mounted a full production of “The Nutcracker.”

“Every year I think, ‘Oh, my God, another ‘Nutcracker!’ ” she cries, throwing up her hands.

“And then I end up enjoying it so much. We have our moments, like the night one of our cavaliers left his dog in the dressing room and it wandered onto the stage.”

Meanwhile, the cast of the first act gathers in the main rehearsal space, including several parents dressed as 19th century party-goers. Jim Camparo’s two daughters have grown up and left the school, the younger to train with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, but he still comes back every year out of nostalgia.

“It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving or Christmas without the ‘Nutcracker,’ ” he says, shrugging.

While the adults and little ones rehearse the party scene, limber teenage girls in black leotards and pink tights sit in groups of three or four along the mirrored wall like so many birds at rest. Every one of them wears her hair in a neat chignon at the nape of her long neck. They look like a painting by Degas.

Only a very few boys mingle among them, and they don’t necessarily want to let their secret out. Being the only boy among so many girls is “awesome,” according to Abe Cohen Hoffing.

And 14-year-old E.J. Camp agrees, saying that ballet helps him with his other activity: boxing. “It can help you with anything. It works both your mind and your body.”

Incredibly, these young ladies and gentlemen are as graceful and composed within as they are on the outside. While their seemingly ageless teacher has the verve and suppleness of a teenager, these teens have the poise of much older people.

“I relate my life to a four-leaf clover,” explains 13-year-old Chelsea Rooke, who has come straight from her 8-year-old sister Carra’s soccer practice, when asked how she juggles it all.

“Each leaf is an area of my life: dance, family, friends and school.” She proceeds to hold forth for a while on how much learning the discipline of dance has helped her with things like memorizing vocabulary in Spanish and how she plans to attend Princeton if she doesn’t get on with a major dance company.

This is a young lady who clearly feels at home in any era, be it past, present or future. And that is the “Nutcracker’s” best gift of all, that sense of universal connection between generations, of continuity from one era to the next through basic principles like generosity, wonder and community.

Out on the rehearsal floor, Herr Drosselmeyer, wearing khaki Dockers, a polo shirt and a cape, presents young Clara with her nutcracker, and she pirouettes in a timeless gesture of delight, just as hundreds of Claras are doing on this same Saturday afternoon throughout the country and the world.

And whether we’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid or Kwanzaa or simply exchanging gifts in the pure spirit of nondenominational love, “The Nutcracker” is always there, reminding us ever so gently of the holidays’ true meaning.