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nutcracker DVD


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I own the Kirov's version of the Nutcracker on DVD, and I now wish to buy a traditional version, because I only recently found out that I do not know it at all. :smilie_mondieu: (I did see a 'non-Vainonen' Nutcracker some years ago, but I seem to have forgotten all about it :) )

So, to get to know the traditional Nutcracker, I understand the Peter Wright version would be a good choice? Or which other ones could I consider buying?

Thank you. :)

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it's hard to know what 'traditional' means in this context.

Balanchine's staging owes much, tho' by no means everything, to the staging he knew and danced in Petrograd.

further muddying the waters of this 'choice' as traditional is the fact that the commercially available video is directed for camera and includes details at variance from the stage version - the unfortunate make-up vs. mask in the case of the little Nutcracker's appearances for the battle with the mice, for ex. - but it does include the trepak/hoop-dance which Balanchine himself danced in his youth and which relates directly to the dance first done in the 1892 ivanov/petipa staging as it was arranged by its originator, Aleksandr Shiryaev. Likewise it includes the pantomime for the little prince to relate his 'history' to the Sugarplum Fairy, but this too is compromised by the fact that film's 'little prince' is mcauley culkin, who, tho' he studied somewhat at the School of American Ballet, does not in this phase of his career perform the way an actual ballet student might.

overall this video bears study but no one who has seen only this filmed version of the ballet can be said to know with any confidence Balanchine's actual production.

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