There is perhaps no other ballet in the entire classical dance repertoire associated with such a clearly defined visual cliché in the audience’s imagination as «The Nutcracker. A Version». In my version of «The Nutcracker», I consciously reject Alexandre Dumas’s sugary fairy tale and return to the original source – the great Hoffmann’s «The Nutcracker and the Mouse King».
In contrast to Dumas’s polished, picture-postcard beauty, Hoffmann offers a complex and contradictory exploration of a child’s inner world. His tale examines the conflicts of growing up, the confrontation with the adult world, and the hidden manifestations of early desires and fears. It is a kind of encyclopaedia of child psychology, powerfully intensified by the artistic devices of German Romanticism.
During her time on stage, my heroine undergoes an immense journey through life – from a defenceless child to a mature individual capable of fighting for the right to be understood and heard. And although this entire journey unfolds within a dream that is both sweet and unsettling, before our eyes she undergoes and completes a profound personal metamorphosis, becoming a symbol of adult strength clothed in a child’s guise.
The Nutcracker. A Version is a new Ukrainian two-act phantasmagorical ballet staged by Radu Poklitaru and inspired by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
The story begins on a cold winter street, where a little homeless girl searches for even the smallest measure of warmth and human kindness. She approaches affluent passers-by as they hurry past, but to them she might as well not exist. Only the Mouse stops beside her and offers what the human world has failed to give her – care.
Falling asleep beneath the windows of the wealthy Stahlbaum family’s home, the girl seems to enter another life. In her dream, she becomes Marie, the daughter of an affluent family, surrounded by a Christmas celebration, presents, the mysterious arrival of Drosselmeyer and his unusual gift – the Nutcracker. At first, he frightens Marie, but gradually she comes to recognise in him a source of closeness, tenderness and protection.
An uncanny world comes to life around her, as the Mice and the imaginings of childhood gradually reveal another dimension to the story. Here, fear intertwines with warmth, loneliness with the dream of love, while the fairy tale grows ever more unsettling and profound.
The Nutcracker. A Version unfolds as the poignant dream of a child who, until the very end, longs for warmth, a home and love. Within this dream, she undergoes her own transformation: from vulnerability to inner strength, from loneliness to claiming the right to be seen and heard.
This new version of The Nutcracker will feature original music by Ukrainian composer Oleksandr Rodin, currently being created especially for Radu Poklitaru’s libretto. The score is conceived so that the anticipation of Christmas, the fragility of a child’s dream and the shimmer of celebration will gradually reveal other shades of the story – anxiety, tension, tenderness and the tragic power of its finale.
The music for the forthcoming production is envisioned as an integral, living part of its dramatic structure. It will breathe alongside the characters, draw the audience into the uncanny realm of a child’s dream and make palpable what cannot always be expressed in words: loneliness, the need for love, the fragility of hope and the desire to be seen.
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