'Nutcracker' cast gives truly enchanting show

Dec 9, 2006

Author: Jamie Tobias Neely

Position: Staff writer

Source: Spokesmane Review

As rich a tradition in this city as riding carousel animals in the summertime, "The Nutcracker" pirouetted into Spokane for another holiday season Friday night.

Little girls in red taffeta skirts, cell phone-bearing middle-schoolers and their patient, lovely mothers streamed into the INB Performing Arts Center. Some of them spoke with Russian accents.

That added a touch of snowy authenticity to this Peter Tchaikovsky classic performed by the Spokane Symphony, Alberta Ballet and Ballet British Columbia.

The loveliest scene of this ballet struck just before intermission.

That's when the Snow King and Queen dance a strong, elegant pas de deux in the midst of a towering Enchanted Forest. As snowflakes drift down, the choir sings, and soon Clara and the Nutcracker Prince are escorted into a magical golden Swan.

This production, choreographed by Mikko Nissinen, contained many fine, professional moments. But this one was the highlight.

That's often true of any "Nutcracker" production. The scene is just that lovely. But on opening night, it also featured the strongest dancers of the evening, Galien Johnston as the Snow Queen and Reid Bartelme as the Snow King. The Ferris High School Canterbury Belles sang as well.

After intermission, these two dancers shone again, this time as the chiseled, stylized Arabian dancers. Johnston, especially, dances with extraordinary strength and disciplined beauty.

Maki Matsuoka's Sugar Plum Fairy danced a fine pas de deux with Christopher Gray as an expressive, athletic Nutcracker Prince.

Another dancer who twice delighted the audience was Laetitia Clement, just right as the stiff, mechanical ballerina doll in Act I and pretty and precise as the butterfly in Act II.

As always, the children in the cast showed off the excellent training of the region's ballet schools. They were well-cast and well-rehearsed. Kelsey Piva shone as a charming, wide-eyed Clara, and Nora Swoboda, as her brother, Fritz, crisply led the boys in their shenanigans.

Kelley McKinlay played Uncle Drosselmeier as part trickster, part mime and part mad scientist. And it was that last impulse, his gray hair standing on end, that kept the audience entertained throughout. His massive cape practically deserved a billing all its own.

The costumes particularly please in this production, made of rich velvets, satins and lace during the opening Christmas party scene. As the evening grows more spellbinding, even the grandfather clock gains a human face and enormous flapping golden arms.

This evening gave the audience much beauty to contemplate and enough silly moments, one of them involving mouse-related rigor mortis, to make it grin.