Word: clara
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...loosely on an E.T.A. Hoffmann fairy tale, into palatable adult fare. More complex still, a dramatic link must be fabricated to tie together two acts that are little more than kissing cousins. Act I recounts a Christmas episode in which an accident befalling a nutcracker, the favorite present of Clara Stahlbaum, triggers a dream. Toys come to life. A platoon of mice invades her parlor. The nutcracker turns into a prince who leads his young mistress on an imaginary journey to the Kingdom of Sweets. The second act is usually a froth of dazzling leaps, spins and exuberant folk-flavored...
...Eroticism. With a canny mix of showmanship and a keen instinct for his craft, Baryshnikov has devised solutions that infuse his Nutcracker with logic as well as magic. There is the traditional Christmas tree that grows onstage, a puppet show and a pretty pink and white sleigh to transport Clara and her prince. But there is no Sugar Plum Fairy and the cast is entirely adult. Clara, danced by Marianna Tcherkassky, hovers somewhere between child and woman. Her godfather Drosselmeyer, brilliantly portrayed by Alexander Minz, is both fatherly and aboil with suppressed eroticism. Baryshnikov accents mystery and the paradox...
Baryshnikov created his Nutcracker for Tcherkassky, 24, the ballerina whose A.B.T. debut last season in Giselle stirred much excitement. As Clara, Tcherkassky danced with the dewy radiance of a young Fonteyn. Well-matched physically and in spirit, Tcherkassky and Baryshnikov are natural partners. Their approach to dance is one of elegance and simplicity. Both are exceptionally musical and seem at times to dance on one breath...
...Trunoff, ballet master of the London Festival Ballet: "I call it The Dance of the Cornflakes' because we've got corns on our feet from dancing it so often." There are few major dancers or choreographers whose careers have not crossed that of Herr Drosselmeyer, Marie (or Clara, as she is sometimes known) or the Sugar Plum Fairy. Dame Margot Fonteyn made her debut at Sadler's Wells in 1934 as a snowflake. Both Rudolf Nureyev and Baryshnikov danced the prince as young men in Leningrad, as did Balanchine himself some 60 years...
...dinner party. "It's a chore," Stevenson confesses. "But the merit is getting the children into the theater both on the stage and in the audience." At a performance in San Antonio, he says, "you could hear the children in the audience screaming with joy when Fritz scares Clara with the rat. There is no other ballet like that...