Miami City Ballet Opens with Holiday Classic
"George Balanchine's The Nutcracker"
Miami City Ballet
Adrienne Arsht Center
Miami, Florida
December 13 to 15, 2019
Miami City Ballet opened with George Balanchine’s Nutcracker at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, December 13th to 15th with strong attendance at the Friday opener and a packed Sunday matinee. Both castings turned in strong performances.
Some North American ballet companies make news with intentions to remake Nutcracker productions to reflect their city’s racial and ethnic mix. MCB has already accomplished a great deal here, a fact Isabel Toledo infused into her costumes. In 2017 celebrated woman’s designer Isabel Toledo and her husband, artist and illustrator, Ruben Toledo revamped the costumes and design elements of MCB’s Nutcracker. Mrs. Toledo died in August but she left behind a production that bubbles with embossed fabrics, surprising cuts of coat and dress and happy juxtapositions of texture.
But her costuming goes a step further. It identifies Miami as a family of hues. For instance, seven year old MCB student Dev Jones performed a Fritz most parents would fret over. Despite the crowd of Act I students, the purple jacket flaps of his periwinkle suit identified him instantly with the eggplant coat of on-stage father, Rainer Krenstetter (as Dr. Stahlbaum). For both performances, Mia Zaffaroni charmed as Marie. The hints of gold in her wooly white dress anchored her visually to the gown of on-stage mom, Tricia Albertson (as Mrs. Stahlbaum).
So how were the performances of opening weekend? The Opus I orchestra under MCB principal conductor and music director, Gary Sheldon, made the weekend memorable for music. Especially noteworthy were violinist Mei Mei Luo’s Act I solo and Francisco Rennó’s celesta in Act II. Dominick Scherer as the Little Prince mimed a terrific Act II battle scene ending with a closing lunge any fencer would envy. The dance of the Snowflakes began with shades of difference in spacing, alignment and timing in the groups of four. However the final presto presented an impressive phalanx of sixteen tightly coordinated dancers who sprang in pas de chat, drove forward in emboité or bourréed into the closing triangle as one.
Key to Act II is the Sugar Plum Fairy. Play it too detached and distant, and the point of the Act – her presentation of the dance form’s youngest dancers – vanishes. Mixing older sister sensitivity with watchful teacher mien, Jennifer Lauren fully connected with the role’s double demand for accessible aristocrat and heart-stopping dancer. She worked wonders with the celesta’s uniform staccato, varying the accent of the phrase with the sweep of her arm or the turn of her head and with consistently gorgeous suppleness in the upper body. Friday and Sunday, demi-soloists Nicole Stalker and Chase Swatosh set the bar high in the dance of Hot Chocolate. The trumpet line flashed by in eighths and sixteenths while the bass and cellos moderated beneath. The two dancers gave both registers their due, Swatosh adding flair to his final double tour with softly bent knees. On Friday Shimon Ito packed double tours and a pair of well-defined jeté cloche into sixty seconds before vanishing back into Act II’s most gorgeous prop -- a black lacquer box stamped with a ruby face. As lead shepherdess, Ellen Grocki was spectacular on Friday, hopping in attitude devant and derrière.
Both Friday and Sunday Kleber Rebello brought impressive energy to the dance of the Candy Canes, but no less impressive were the younger dancers who flanked him – Renata Adarvez, Alina Besteman, Ilona Halloran, Sirja Joeveer, Paulina Luis, Sofia Osorio, Valentina Rodriguez and Daniela Yunis. For both performances the Dance of the Flowers completely disarmed. In sequence after sequence the Flowers showed breathtaking coordination whether circling in bourrée or with a kick, reach and fold to the chimes. They left at least one person in the hall a happy disaster of emotions. Samantha Hope Galler and Emily Bromberg were terrific lieutenants to Ashley Knox who on Friday dazzled as a gorgeously musical Dew Drop.
On Sunday sixteen year old Taylor Naturkas – a second year Miami City Ballet School student – was a surprising choice for a role second only in importance to the Sugar Plum Fairy. Though she rushed some transitions, Naturkas shined with the precision she brought to the part and showed eye-popping strength in jetés. For the dance of the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier, lighting designer James Ingalls drenched the scene in cyan blue before shading it with the tones of a ripening mango. Costumed in pale mint and white, Jennifer Lauren and Renan Cerdeiro as her Cavalier brought the ballet to a powerful close. During their pas de deux, Cerdeiro provided terrific support in lifts — whether planting Lauren on his shoulder or pressing her overhead. Lauren made unsupported arabesques look effortless, and the Arsht stage seemed snug for Cerdeiro’s circle of jetés.
copyright © 2019 by Sean Erwin
