Tchaikovsky - Maurice Bejart's The Nutcracker / Bejart Ballet Lausanne

Product Description The showman of twentieth-century dance, Maurice Bejart, presents his unique version of the well-loved Christmas ballet The Nutcracker. Using Tchaikovsky's score in its entirety, augmented with popular waltz and accordion music performed on-stage by the legendary Yvette Horner, Bejart takes the original St. Petersburg story as a springboard from which to evoke the memories, emotions, and feelings of his own life's journey from a Marseille childhood. Recorded live at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Damaas Thijs, Elisabet Ros, Gil Roman, Juichi Kobayashi, Yvette Horner. 103 minutes. Amazon.com Don't expect battling mice, giant Christmas trees, and waltzing snowflakes in world-renowned choreographer Maurice Bejart's boldly different take on Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet, The Nutcracker. Discarding entirely the traditional story of Clara and the statuette she rescues and accompanies to a candy kingdom, Bejart uses Tchaikovsky's score to accompany his own life story (which only briefly portrays Christmas). When his mother "departs on a long journey," the 7-year-old Bim (danced by Damaas Thijs) is seduced into the world of dance by a character (Gil Roman) who represents both Faust's Mephistopheles and Marius Petipa, the groundbreaking French choreographer and dancer who brought Tchaikovsky's original ballet to life. While Bim learns dance, he still envisions the ideal of his mother, who is represented by a towering Botticelli Venus-like statue and with whom he finally achieves a bond in a near-nude pas de deux that more than hints of incest. As in the original, the second-act divertissement is mostly different dance vignettes, here represented as acts in a Marseilles circus. In the greatest divergence from the original score, the middle of the act adds a handful of French café tunes featuring Yvette Horner's accordian, which can be heard embellishing a few other dances (and has something of a parallel in Tchaikovsky's innovative use of the celeste). The grand pas de deux, however, is performed very traditionally following Petipa's original choreography. On a screen above the stage, Bejart himself appears in occasional segments explaining certain plot points, and he goes into more detail in the DVD's 22-minute behind-the-scenes feature, which also includes comments from collaborators and members of Bejart's loyal and longstanding company, Théâtre Musical de Paris Châtelet. If your mind is open to a nontraditional production that includes bare-chested boy scouts and a pair perhaps best described as "drag kings," you'll probably be fascinated by this strikingly envisioned, expertly danced performance. --David Horiuchi
ASIN: B000050GC5
VSKU: DBV.B000050GC5.N
Condition: New
Author/Artist:Elizabeth Ros|Julien Favreau|Damaas Thijs|Christine Blanc|Gil Roman|Juichi Kobayashi|Kathryn Bradney|Catherine Zuasnabar|Yvette Horner|Christophe Garcia|Thierry Deball|Roger Cunningham|Ross MacGibbon|Maurice Bjart
Binding: Dvd
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