Rigos’ recent 2010/2011 Nutcracker ballet is similar to Darren Aronofsky’s psychological reworking of the pristine ballerina heroine in Black Swan (2010) through an exploration of hidden desires. His Nutcracker is a confronting, funny and lewd ballet, expressed through a series of dark and illicit dreams experienced by an adult Clara. Like Black Swan, Rigos’ Nutcracker explores the relationship between innocence and experience, violence and sexuality, reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmares.

Rigos’ ballets are often called ‘postmodern’, which can imply numerous things. One of postmodernism’s most common meanings refers to a critical, subversive and radical interpretation of past stories. Rigos’ Nutcracker is a visual erotic feast featuring nude male dancers bathed in red light, a mascara-smudged Clara playing with her nutcracker doll in her underwear, and vivid simulations of sexual encounters through choreographed dance. Rigos’ adult and sexualised Clara (played by a transsexual dancer) is a subversive reworking of the prepubescent Clara in Tchaikovsky’s ballet. His ballet sheds new light on Clara’s seemingly innocent dream in the original Nutcracker story, which on closer inspection, is filled with violence and unspoken romantic desires hidden beneath childhood play.

Rigos’ Nutcracker is similar to Graeme Murphy’s own postmodern version of The Nutcracker (1992) in which Clara is transformed into a Ballets Russes dancer trapped in Australia by World War II. The playful war that Clara imagines between the toy soldiers and the mice in Tchaikovsky’s classic story is literalised in Murphy’s version as a real historical battle, bringing violence to the forefront.

This critical perspective is evident in other postmodern ballets, such as Matthew Bourne’s and Mats Ek’s respective 1995 and 1987 reworkings of Swan Lake. Unlike the traditional virginal female swans, Bourne’s all-male swans exude a virility that highlights the importance of gender in the creation of ballet narrative. Similarly, Ek’s androgynous bald-headed swans remind us of the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity that we apply to the balletic body. What all of these ballets have in common is that they ask their audience to think critically and re-examine classic stories from a more interrogative perspective. This is one of the ways in which ballet contributes to the critical spirit of debate associated with postmodernism.

In Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, Soloist Gina Brescianini steps into the shoes of the wide-eyed Clara, rides a flying goose, saves her Nutcracker Prince and travels to the Land of Sweets.
Clara is definitely one of my all-time favourite roles. She’s bright, inquisitive and wants to be involved in everything. It’s such a joyous role. From the moment the curtain goes up, you enter the stage and dance throughout the entire ballet. I love how much dancing you do, but also how magical the production is.

The Nutcracker is a magical journey from a child-like perspective, but with a range of complicated emotions as well. For me, when the nutcracker doll wakes up I think something awakens in Clara, too. She really thinks he’s dead, but he wakes up and they dance a beautiful pas de deux together. They have a real, loving friendship. Every dancer brings their own interpretation to the role of Clara but I think when a dancer is drawing their interpretation from a real place within them, and they’re expressing that, then the audience can really connect.

Damien Welch has a penchant for villainous characters. In 2009, Damien retired from the principal ranks of The Australian Ballet. This year he returns as a guest artist to play the shadowy magician Drosselmeyer.
The key thing Peter Wright told me about Drosselmeyer was that he needed to have a particular kind of authority, so that when he makes his very first entrance he’s already commanding the room. He’s been employed to entertain the kids and adults – in other versions of The Nutcracker he’s an uncle or a friend – but in this one he’s a professional musician, entertainer and storyteller. There’s even a scene where he gets paid for his services. He’s a man of complete confidence and he’s a little bit devious as well.

I love playing characters like these, from characters like Drosselmeyer who have a sinister edge, to full-blown baddies. For me, they’re much more fun than playing the prince. Some princes are great, but villains always command respect in the way they hold themselves, that evil glint in their eye, or because they know something the other characters don’t. It’s a wonderful challenge and a satisfying feeling to portray these roles.

Robert Curran, Principal Artist of The Australian Ballet, is The Nutcracker’s Prince in pink. Every time Robert steps on stage in this magical ballet, he remembers when his career as a dancer began.
For me, the key metaphor in this role is the transition from childhood to adulthood. The role of the Prince is as much a romantic figure as he is a saviour – especially during the battle of the rats. The main challenge for a dancer performing the role of the Prince is giving the character some gravitas. You know, when he’s wearing pink for most of the ballet you don’t want to him to be a flimsy character.

Throughout my dance career, The Nutcracker has always been an inspiration. You want to be magical and technically assured so you can slot yourself into the memory of another young dancer. I remember opportunities coming my way as a young dancer where I danced The Nutcracker overseas. This ballet really makes me remember my first years with the company. It’s always an honour dancing with Lucinda Dunn, too. We have a great working relationship and bring the best out of each other. Dancing this ballet gives a real sense of achievement.

The Sugar Plum Fairy is the ballerina of Clara’s dreams. Principal Artist Lucinda Dunn also dreamed about dancing this role ever since she first slipped into a tutu. For Lucinda, hard work and determination has paid off.
The pinnacle of the second act is set in the Kingdom of the Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy enters and performs the grand pas de deux with her Prince. The Sugar Plum Fairy, complete with her pink sparkly tutu, is very me; anyone who knows me knows that I love pink and sparkles. But it’s also a very challenging and long solo, and quite heavy on my legs.

Now that I have a little daughter I’ll be introducing her to the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Interestingly, during the 2007 Sydney season when I danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy I was pregnant – so I had my own little Sugar Plum! That actually makes this role even more special.

The Australian Ballet’s Artist in Residence Colin Peasley joined the company in its inaugural year of 1962. Since then he’s performed countless conniving villains, peculiar magicians and foppish kings. Colin plays the grandfather in this production of The Nutcracker.
A lot of dancers think that if they’re not doing five pirouettes then they’re not in a good role. But there’s a heck of a lot of satisfaction in exploring who your character is. I think about what the grandfather must have been like at the turn of the century. He sounds like he’s very proud of his family, so I try ad infuse that into the character on stage.

To colour your character, you can’t just know what he’s doing on stage but you have to know how he got on stage. What did the character have for breakfast? Why does he have this wonderful house where he’s throwing a fabulous party, and yet he’s a tottering old man who doesn’t put on any heirs and graces? I get really bound up in the story. I mean, you can walk across the stage but if you can walk across the stage with a past, present and possible future then you can bring the character to life.

The Nutcracker plays in Melbourne and Sydney in September and December

This is an edited extract from The Australian Ballet’s The Nutcracker souvenir programme, available at the theatre before performances

Image: Gina Brescianini as Clara and Damien Welch as Drosselmeyer
. Photography Jim McFarlane

Sir Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker is like the first decoration you hang at Christmas time and the last one you put away. It is, in fact, so beautiful that its festivity endures all year round. For costume and set designer John Macfarlane, it was crucial that the design also reflected the darkness inherent in the story.

Macfarlane uses grand colour schemes and a painterly approach throughout the production. He drew on Edwardian influences for the Christmas party scene of act one, with the influence of the Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander extending to all aspects of its costumes and austere sets.

The atmosphere in the Stahlbaum residence is – despite its grand mantelpiece, flickering candelight and brightly baubled Christmas tree – as cold as the rear window that illuminates the blue harshness of a snowy landscape. There is all the regality of a salon without the intimacy of a family home: full-length maid uniforms with bonnets and aprons; frock coats and smart gold-trimmed navy suits for the gentlemen, and prancing girls in wheat muslin dresses spilling with frills. While being beautiful they all point to the regimented sensibilities from which our wide-eyed Clara escapes into the world of imagination.

The magic begins to happen when the clock strikes midnight and Drosselmeyer, a family friend-slash-magician, appears in a cosmically charged cape. In one of the production’s most spectacular moments, the Christmas tree grows to a colossal height. As Macfarlane says, “All these big ballets have pivot points in the score, when you should really travel, travel, travel. You can’t shortchange them with the staging”.

The next thing we know, Clara is overpowering a giant Napoleonic rat with her ballet slipper. Storytelling logic gives way to dream logic as we travel with her and the life-sized Nutcracker prince on a journey through a crystalline wonderland to the Land of Sweets. It is here that we breathe in the bold, sculptural costumes that feature in a series of arresting divertissements. Tutus reach dizzying heights of sublimity, climaxing in the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, whose sugary ‘greyed pink’ tutu features over 10,000 hand-sewn beads. With material sourced from all over the globe, and influences stretching back to the Ballets Russes, there is no shortage of attention paid to the lavish costumes. Like the transformative set design, they combine European fairytale and romantic ballet tradition to create stage sorcery at its most magical.

This is an edited excerpt from Anna Sutton’s article for The Australian Ballet’s The Nutcracker souvenir programme. The Nutcracker plays in Melbourne and Sydney in September and December.

Photography by Jim McFarlane featuring artists of The Australian Ballet