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Coffee video -- identification?


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There's a Youtube posting of part of the Coffee (Arabian Dance) from The Nutcracker being passed around widely. The title of the posting is "Tigerballet". (I refrain from posting the actual link to avoid even getting close to infringing on the forum rules.)

The choreography has a fairly traditional foreground but a background character with rather contrasting, and amusing, style and choreography. Problem is, no one has identified it, neither company nor choreographer. I'm very curious, not to mention that if the entire performance is available on DVD, I'd very much like to buy it. (It looks to me like the posting is almost certainly done without permission, given the failure to identify and that the clip starts in the middle of the movement.)

Thanks,

Edward

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Thanks. Searching on "Nutty Nutcracker" does turn up some interesting results. Most don't have any photos, much less video, so it's hard to tell if this could be from any of them. A lot of them seem to be much broader comedy than this somewhat subtle one.

The descriptions of PNB's Nutty sound the closest, in part because it's just the last performance of their Nutcracker with some alterations. The part in the clip would have been a perfectly fine Arabian even without the comedy spicing it up. I could well believe the elephant and tiger costumes being Sendak. But knowing nothing more about their production, I can't tell if there's even any resemblance.

I'm thinking now that the Youtube video was perhaps taken from a clip shown on TV ... well, OK, it doesn't take a lot of brilliance to come up with that. But the fact that it starts part way through the movement could mean that someone saw the beginning on TV, said oh this is good, and turned on the recorder.

Thanks again, even if nothing else shows up. At least I'm not the only one wondering ...

Edward

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Well, it's not the PNB production (they've got a peacock carried onstage in a golden cage rather than the more conventional danse du ventre). I think the tigers in the background really resemble the Cheetos Cheese Puffs advertising mascot, Chester Cheetah here, but I've no idea if that's intentional or a coincidence.

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The gyrations of the tiger did produce a certain amount of what sounds to me, at least, like nervous laughter.

I've heard of the Nutty Nutcrackers. But I don't recall that they go out of their way to undercut the work of the real dancers, as occurs in this particular performance. My heart went out to those dancers. They persisted bravely in performing the real choreography despite competition from a performer from an alternate universe.

I confess that I had some sympathy with one of those who posted a comment: "It ain't easy bein' cheesy."

P.S. I was gong to post the Link to YouTube, but found a comment that "This has been tagged a Spam Show " and have decided not to do so. (I'm not sure what a Spam Show is, but it doesn't sound good. :) )

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