What it was supposed to be was a production of The Nutcracker by one of those itinerant Eastern European companies that roam around the UK two or three times a year. Now, I'm not daft. I don't expect miracles, especially when they come to this city and use a venue very little suited to the performance of ballet (and that escapes me too - surely there are some proscenium arch auditoriums in town that could take these companies for a couple of nights, at no greater expense than the Concert Hall?). They schlepp around the country, the dancers underpaid and overworked, with their shoestring budget productions, (usually) badly recorded soundtracks, and minimal and often old-fashioned staging values, but that's the world of dance for you. A dancer - a good dancer, particularly - is a wondrous thing, an athlete swathed in beauty, driven by a vocation as all-consuming as holy orders, so that even under the patchiest of circumstances, they can still communicate their own passion for their art, and their devotion to their craft. I was merely expecting an honest evening's entertainment; it's the only Nutcracker I'm going to see live on stage this season. What I got was the most charmless and graceless performance I've ever seen! So, that's as much of a review as I'm going to give, and the company concerned deserves no recognition, not even a name.
[Next : 21st November]
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