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DanceView Times, San Francisco Bay Area edition |
Volume 1, Number 12 An online supplement to DanceView magazine
Lyrical, Witty and Nutty as a Fruitcake: The Hard Nut Swings Into Town The
Hard Nut by
Paul Parish Berkeley likes to think that Mark Morris belongs here. THe director of Cal Performances, Robert Cole, not only books Morris 's company several times a year, and has set up a semi-official residency for the company at Zellerbach Auditorium, but when Christmas rolls around, Cole actually conducts the orchestra for Morris's brilliant burlesque of the Nutcracker, the really big show called The Hard Nut, which opened last Friday night once again to a delighted audience, many of whom see it every year instead of the "regular" Nutcracker. I've myself
seen it every year since it first opened here in 1996—it's played
with a few breaks, almost every year since—and I find it to be,
like a great comic opera, mysteriously intricate and deep, and that the
more I see it, the more satisfying it becomes. This year I was shocked
to realize how romantic The Hard Nut is—despite all its overt ironies,
and the manifold gay references, the pas de deux for Marie (Lauren Grant)
and the Nutcracker (David Leventhal) made me cry, it was so beautiful,
so touching, so delicate and poignant and fresh and musical, and so beautifully
danced. It has I think become more classical, more mythic, more universal
over the years, as this couple has taken over the roles—rather as
Apollo evolved with Farrell and Martins in the roles, except that in the
case of the Hard Nut, Leventhal and Grant are musical, generous,
classical in their way of moving, and WARM. This is how our parents should
have fallen in love.
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What's On This Week Dec.
7-28
Dec. 7-14 Dec.
10-28 Dec.
11-12 Dec.
12-13 Dec.
13 Dec.
13 Dec.
14
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