Maurice Bejart's Nutcracker

Maurice Béjart who died last month is the writer and director of this "Nutcracker". I have never been partial to his work and this ballet is not an exception.

Béjart himself hogs this video by inserting himself and his comments into it at considerable length. And this is the probably the most willful and self-indulgent version of the holiday perennial and has almost nothing to do with the holiday or original scenario of Marius Petipa (It is still debated whether Petipa or Lev Ivanov was the original choreographer.).

Things get off to a poignant start when Elle ("She"), the boy Bim's mother, tells him she has to go on a long journey leaving him only a wrapped box with a sculpture in it. This turns out to be the substitute for the "Christmas tree" of the original. For the rest of the ballet we get images of Bim's apparently incestuous love of his mother's memory.

Now Bim (a clown figure probably based on the late Marcel Marceau's Bip.) is a clear representative of Béjart himself and it is true that the real Béjart lost his mother at the age of 7. Initially touching, this relationship gets really icky by the end of the ballet.

Béjart is a good boy at first in his dealings with the original Tchaikovsky score but, during the Snowflakes Waltz, a famous French accordionist, Yvette Horner, is introduced and that's the end of that. I suppose she's a fine artist in her own field, but I don't know what she's doing here.

Later on Maurice introduces, mostly French, popular music into the ballet and though the conductor Edmon Colomer comments on how these are so beautifully integrated with the original score, I can't agree at all and I find the effect jarring.

Gil Roman ably plays the important character of Petipa/Mephisto (Yes, from Goethe's Faust.) but after all Béjart's revisionism, Gil announces that the Pas de Deux will use Petipa's (Ivanov's?) original choreography, one wonders why it wasn't better danced.

At the end of the comments, Juichi Kobayashi, the young man who plays Felix the Cat, name taken from an old comic strip, is shown in an outtake where he gives his real name, then freezes up after and utters the immortal 4-letter "S" word! Now there's something I can agree with!

I am not the sort of person to normally watch "The Nutcracker", as I am not exactly a fan of ballet. While I have actually seen the ballet on film before, I had my ballet-loving daughter on hand to help me make heads or tails of this one--and I REALLY needed it. However, she also was very confused--even though she'd gone to see the ballet six or seven times. This confusion is because it looks almost nothing like the classic ballet. Instead, it's Maurice Bejart's recollections and vision with SOME of the old ballet. You get the original score but everything else is discombobulated--with a few similar characters and lots of stuff right from Freud---with LOTS of imagery about a boy's Oedipal fixations towards his mother. And, sadly, much of the artistry and difficulty of the original ballet is gone--as are the lovely sets. It's all minimalistic and stark. You also get some really odd stuff--where Bejart APPEARS to be doing sign language on a giant screen above the dancers. However, I know sign language (and American and French are very similar) and it was all nonsense--making me feel it was just a case of self-indulgence--as was everything about this production. In other words, the ballet was all about him. As for me, I wanted to see the Mouse and all the cute characters--not Freudian symbolism and a character that looks like the guy from the "Thundercats" cartoon (Felix). What you have left might have some nice dancing but it is also anything but fun or festive. And isn't "The Nutcracker" supposed to be fun and about Christmas?!

Before retiring, I used to work as a psychology teacher at an arts school. Perhaps this version of "The Nutcracker" would have been interesting to show the kids (particularly the dancers in my class), but I really doubt if they would have enjoyed this either. My advice--watch at your own risk. If you REALLY love Bejart and Freud, you may love this production. Otherwise....there are lots of nicer and less confusing versions out there.