National Ballet of Canada cracks open its sumptuous Nutcracker in a Fabergé egg once again

National Ballet of Canada’s production of The Nutcracker, set in late-Imperial Russia, is 28 years old this season but its choreographic ingenuity and sumptuous, Fabergé-perfumed sets and costumes, still deliver everything holiday audiences might desire.

Choreographer and former NB artistic director James Kudelka has tweaked E.T.A. Hoffman’s original narrative about a little girl’s rite of passage into adolescence, focusing instead on rival siblings Marie and Misha. The opening scene takes place in the barn of their parents’ estate where they cavort with stable boy Peter, later transformed into the Nutcracker/Prince as their fantastical adventures unfold.

This relatively humble opening setting, where a barn mouse amusingly scuttles across the stage, eminently suits both Tchaikovsky’s score and Kudelka’s vision for it. Various families with their children along with household servants join in traditional ‘folk’ dances which wouldn’t look out of place at a real social barn gathering. But in a brief flash, Kudelka foreshadows the magic yet to come by having Peter (principal dancer Harrison James) break into full classical pirouette and leap mode during a brief harp solo before he quickly reverts to the rustic movements more appropriate to his lowly station.

The bearer of the titular Nutcracker is Uncle Nikolai, here a sort of magician in full cossack garb. Spinning like a whirling dervish, principal artist Spencer Hack took full advantage of the character’s signature quick, repeated à la seconde turns, strikingly magnified by his flowing skirted jacket. Hack brought the right degree of menace to the role, ultimately toned down once he is transformed into Act 2’s more benevolent ‘Grand Duke’ Nikolai.

The decor undergoes two magnificent transformations, first from Act 1’s dark barn/bedroom into the sparkling, art deco-inspired backdrops and hanging snowflakes of the Snow Queen’s realm and from there, to rich, imperial red and gold for the palace of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Santo Loquasto’s spectacular sets and costumes and Jennifer Tipton’s exquisite lighting cannot be underestimated when assessing the decades-long appeal of this production.

Principal dancer Genevieve Penn Nabity gets to make one of the all time great entrances out of a huge Fabergé egg. She executed the Sugar Plum Fairy’s famous celeste-accompanied solo with fearless precision and charm, perhaps even more awe-inspiring considering her nasty fall near its start. It appeared she slipped…perhaps on a stray snowflake from the previous scene? Along with James in the grand pas de deux, they provided the evening's most heartfelt dancing. His Prince conveyed he was smitten with a touching, repeated hand-over-heart gesture while Penn Nabity’s high attitudes conveyed a kind of triumph in love.

One of Kudelka’s most surprising innovations is the addition of a Bee character who flits across the stage in the famous Waltz of the Flowers. The role was danced at this performance by second soloist Hannah Galway who had a huge success at the opposite end of the dramatic spectrum in the NB’s recent world premiere of Helen Pickett’s Emma Bovary. Here, virtuosity in the form of quick jumps, leaps and turns, rather than angst-filled resentment, were the order of the day and Galway mastered all that was thrown her way.

Act 2’s themed dances are always crowd favourites, none more so than Arabian Coffee with its needling, earworm melody from the solo oboe. In Kudelka’s version, it is danced by two women and two men, here, first soloists Jenna Savella and Alexandra MacDonald, second soloist Larkin Miller and corps member Konstantin Tkachuk. They perfectly captured the heady, languorous mood of the score as all four bodies sexily melded in one particularly memorable pose.

Young dancers from the National Ballet School of Canada were featured prominently throughout and impressed variously as mice, unicorns, baby chefs and miniature boyars. Shia Obtinario as Marie and Lennox Powell as Misha were convincing as squabbling siblings, executing their not undemanding choreography with precision and character.

The NB’s corps was in excellent form. As Snow Maidens, the women offered a picture perfect conclusion to Act 1’s Land of Snow scene, and breathless, endlessly intertwining formations as flowers and branches in their eponymous waltz.

The National Ballet Orchestra under the company’s Principal Conductor and Music Director David Briskin rose to Tchaikovsky’s glorious climaxes depicting the magical, growing Christmas tree and the heart-on-your sleeve penchés executed so thrillingly by Penn Nabity supported by James in their pas de deux.

There was no hint of routine in what must be the umpteenth performance of this long-serving production. Its almost over-the-top splendour is just what is needed as Toronto days grow shorter, and in the larger world, situations get colder in so many senses.