It is danced to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous melody, but it is not your traditional Christmas Nutcracker: the Joburg Ballet has set it in the Kalahari Desert among ancient Bushmen paintings.
The winter theme has been replaced with sun, sand and baobab trees.
The role of the Sugar Plum Fairy is instead played by a sangoma or traditional healer, and the famous Russian Dance is performed in overalls and gumboots.
The Nutcracker Reimagined comes with the original music and story line of France’s famous ballet dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa — during Christmas night.
And a little girl named Clara experiences a magical adventure.
However, with no snowflakes or tutus, Clara is led by a sangoma through the Kalahari Desert, where the cave paintings come to life. And a baobab is all there is for a Christmas tree.
Christmas in the southern hemisphere comes around midsummer so “trying to pretend that it’s winter outside, is a little bit ridiculous,” Joburg Ballet CEO Dirk Badenhorst said.
“So the idea was to create a South African Nutcracker that would tell the normal story of The Nutcracker, but in a South African setting and in summer,” he added.
The Nutcracker Reimagined was first created in 2008 by the Joburg Ballet’s forerunner.
It is on show again this year — from Saturday through Sept. 27.
“This one is very, very different,” said dancer Keke Chele, who plays the butler.
“Like a traditional Christmas party when that uncle that you haven’t seen in a long time comes to visit, those are the kind of characters that we get to explore and it’s a lot of fun,” he said.
It is set in a magical world of South Africa’s sangomas, baobab trees, the gumboot dance — an invention of black miners — and would not be complete without koeksisters, a traditional local sweet treat.
The choreography is based on classic and contemporary inspiration and is sometimes strikingly pictorial.
However, this year’s version of the ballet adds circus performances, with some characters traveling to a magical world suspended from ropes.
Performers find some of those aerial tricks a bit demanding.
“The most challenging for me is probably the new circus stuff that we’re doing, it’s quite difficult,” says Angela Revie, who plays Clara.
Kitty Phetla, a soloist at the Joburg Ballet, who plays the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy — which in this case is a sangoma — finds the latest version of the dance “more dangerous.”
“It’s more sculptured, rather than being classical, it’s exciting, it’s quick,” she said.
Choreographer Adele Blank admits that adaptation did not initially flow smoothly because many of the dancers are not from South Africa and have already played in the classical Nutcracker.
“So they look at us as if we have lost the plot,” Blank said.
For several years, the Joburg Ballet — previously known as Mzansi Productions and the South African Ballet Theatre — has tried to rebrand itself and reach out beyond its predominantly white audience.
“We are trying to sustain the existing audience, but grow a very new South African audience, particularly a young and black and exciting audience,” Badenhorst said.
This performance “is one of the ways we are trying to achieve that,” he added.
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