A NEW NUT TO CRACK

The sea-foam-green room stinks of shoes and sweat, while the humidity level borders on subtropical. Inside this airless vault, Oregon Ballet Theatre's artistic director, Christopher Stowell, directs his dancers' movements as his sneaker-clad foot taps out the beat of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.

"You're not tired!" Stowell yells to the corps of 14 "flowers" that jete across the floor. "This is your big moment!" Stowell pauses and then instructs his dancers to stretch their individual poses into a more extreme position. "You're flowers blooming," he says. "Not just a bunch of girls with their arms up."

Ballerina McKenzie Fyfe extends her long arms up and out, and it appears as though her ribcage will dislocate from her spine. "Is that too much?" she asks.

"No, it's not too much," Stowell says. "Everything about ballet is too much."

In ballet's royal hierarchy of toomuchness, The Nutcracker is king. But it's the basic structure and tone of New York City Ballet director George Balanchine's 1954 production that started the holiday craze.

The Nutcracker has earned a reputation as a charming child's play. But in 1994, OBT's former artistic trailblazer, James Canfield, choreographed a Nutcracker that took a daring flight to Czarist Russia, trading pat melodrama for the grandeur of a 19th-century royal Russian court. Although Canfield's stylish ballet charmed--and sugar-shocked--fans for nearly a decade, tomorrow night Portland will have a new Nut to crack when Stowell remounts Balanchine's original production.

But why see this new, old Nutcracker, when we've seen the newer, old production dozens of times? The answer is as deceptively simple as the Russian-born master's choreography: With age, this Nut has taken on a new power. Neither saccharine nor stuffy, Balanchine's production is dynamic and--in terms of technical ability--utterly ferocious.

Costumes and Sets: While former designer Campbell Baird used an architectural approach to create Canfield's fabulous Imperial sets, the new production features the soft, "paintings come to life" style of British designer Peter Farmer. As for the frocks, it's the Goodwill bin for the old Nut's duds. The costumes for this production are "a more beautiful version of exactly what you'd expect from The Nutcracker," Stowell says.

Characters: In the past, plum children's roles like Marie and Nutcracker/Prince were doled out to talented--and short--adult company members. This year the kids are kids again, the roles played by two sets of 11- to 14-year-old students from OBT's school--a change that lends a whimsical realism to ballet that's tailor-made for younger viewers.

Choreography: Balanchine drew inspiration directly from the Nut he danced as a child in Russia. He used Tchaikovsky's actual score, which included dance notes from original choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, creating a production that feels at once Old World Russian and bravely American.

"His flowers are pretty, but they're not feeble," Stowell says of Balanchine's choreography. "They're beautiful and steely."

But Stowell saves his greatest praise for Balanchine's musicality. "When Tchaikovsky's music is at its most opulent and romantic, Balanchine often does something really, really simple. It's like he understood that he couldn't possibly live up to how stunning this music is, so he found one thing to do to support it."

Under his parents' direction, Christopher Stowell debuted as the Nutcracker/Prince in the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company's

. At the time, he was 11 years old and had never taken a dance lesson.

OBT is the first West Coast company to present George Balanchine's The Nutcracker. Some 130 dancers, including 95 children, form the three casts that rotate during Nut's 21 performances.

WWeek 2015