Chapter 26
THE FOREST
The full-cast studio call was joyfully chaotic.
Ben sat on the side with Nick, Mariska, Salvatore, and the other coaches, making notes, following the conductor’s scorebook, and bellowing directions like a military general to make sure the children hit their marks, the mouse soldiers marched in formation, and the snowflakes bourréed in unison.
Sander and I made a good team during the battle scene, when Hans-Peter, still in his wooden nutcracker form, is almost felled by the Mouse King until plucky Clara delivers a fatal blow to the back of the beast’s head with her slipper.
I like to think that the only reason this works is because her magician uncle, Herr Drosselmeyer, was still perfecting his spell and, despite Clara shrinking to the size of a mouse, the atomic mass of her slippers remained the same as their regular size.
When the battle is over, Hans-Peter, finally freed from his curse and transformed back into a human soldier, dances gratefully with Clara before the two of them are somehow (a word that does a lot of heavy lifting in The Nutcracker) magicked away from the house and into a snowy starlit forest, the liminal space between worlds.
On opening night, the set design was such that all the glittering ornaments and dark mahogany of the party scene fell away to something as minimalist as the moonlit second act of Swan Lake.
As the sheltered girl stranded in her white nightgown next to her fallen nutcracker, I rushed around the stage trying to feel the bitter cold of the snow, summoning tears to the corners of my eyes.
Then, Sander – glad to be free of his cumbersome wooden head – rose unsteadily to his feet like a man who’d forgotten how it felt to be human.
We locked eyes across the stage, shyly introduced ourselves anew, and leapt into our pas de deux while the andante piece gathered momentum.
I arched my back as he lifted me over his head and ran faster than anyone else had been able to carry me before.
I felt the same euphoria from the first time I ever performed Clara, back when Ray Novak had been my Hans-Peter.
I didn’t need a costume change during the interval, so I chatted to Ray in the wings with a blanket around my bare arms. In his Prince costume and powdered wig, he tried to stay warm without moving too much and shedding glitter everywhere.
‘I kinda envy Sander for getting to go back and revisit Hans-Peter. That’s where all the action is, you know? It’s an awesome role. I miss it sometimes.’
‘You’ve still got a boyish charm about you,’ I said, giddy from Act I. ‘I’m sure if you bought Nick a nice bottle of wine, he’d consider letting you revisit it.’
‘Ha. No, I think that ship’s sailed. Besides, I feel bad for Stephen and Charlie and all the other Hans-Peters – Sander keeps setting the bar too damn high.
And in those white tights…’ Ray closed his eyes and adopted the expression of someone who’d just sampled the finest whisky by a fireside.
‘No straight man has any business looking that good.’
Ray was neither fully in nor out of the closet – he seemed to have accepted that word would get around eventually, and spoke about it casually in small groups of dancers while keeping names and details to himself. It took a moment for me to register what he’d said. I was surprised he didn’t know.
‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘except that Sander isn’t straight.’
Ray looked at me quizzically.
‘He’s never told me directly, but I’ve been reliably informed he’s gay.’
‘Well… you might want to double-check your sources, Trix.’ Ray gave a wry smile. ‘He’s not gay.’
‘What? But—’
The audience were returning to their seats, and in my peripheral vision I caught a square of gold-stitched red. Sander was heading towards us while talking to Jim Goldman, our Herr Drosselmeyer. Ray leaned in to whisper, ‘Trust me, he’s not.’
Ray had always had that distinctly American level of confidence in his own opinions – I’d heard more than one quip about whether the wig-makers would be able to find a cap that could fit his big head.
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I asked him. And kept asking, until he understood that I wasn’t going to stop unless he said no.’
I lowered my voice further, willing Sander not to reach us before I could find out: ‘No to you, or to…?’
‘Being homosexual.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘God knows, I wish he were.’
I didn’t have to take Ray’s opinion at face value. It would have been wiser for me not to; I’d only just wrangled my unrequited feelings into submission. But he was part of the gay community, no matter how much he stuck to the periphery. His word had just as much weight as Jamie’s, didn’t it?
‘Righty-o,’ said Jim, turning our two-person conference into a huddle, with Grace Langham as the Sugar Plum Fairy joining us in a lingering cloud of hairspray. ‘Time to kick this party back into high gear.’
Sander met my eye and smiled. Ready?
Ready to be proved wrong again? Have my heart bruised again?
If it meant believing that one day I could be more than a colleague to him, then yes. I was ready.
* * *
As soon as I spotted Jamie before class the next morning, I dragged him to the canteen and told him what Ray had said. On reflection, he conceded that Sander had not, at any point during the four years they’d shared a dressing room, actually said that he was attracted to men rather than women.
‘Maybe he likes both?’ Jamie suggested. ‘I know a lot of people don’t think it’s possible, but I don’t see why not.
Everyone loves a good BLT and ice cream, even if you don’t necessarily want them at the same time.
Although… I suppose if you treated the ice cream like mayonnaise… and the bacon was proper crispy—’
‘Jamie!’ I clapped, conjuring the spirit of our BBA teachers. ‘Fais attention, s’il te pla?t!’
His tone took on a shade of intrigue. ‘Why does it matter to you so much anyway?’
‘It doesn’t,’ I insisted, too quickly. ‘I just want to make sure I have all my facts straight.’
‘Or bisexual,’ he said, laughing as I gave him a little shove.
The Thames Horizon
The BCBC’s The Nutcracker: Review
Arts Section – Dance
Bill Gordon
Wednesday, 3 December 1986
And so it begins: the annual battle of the Nutcrackers.
Up for consideration this week is the British Classical Ballet Company, which first staged Peter Wright’s production at the Covent Garden Dance Hall in 1984.
Third time seems to have proven the charm, with Wright putting the best spin he can on an otherwise muddled farrago of genres, moods, and choreography (Marius Petipa fell ill just as rehearsals for the original 1892 production began, so Lev Ivanov and dancer Alexander Shiryaev had to patch together the rest with their own steps).
The meat and potatoes (the turkey and roasties, if you will) of the story play out in Act I, while Act II is an extended series of plotless divertissements before a brief moment of catharsis and resolution at the end.
It is in many ways a ridiculous ballet, and yet it remains the only one with a guaranteed slot in any given company’s season.
From the costumiers to the orchestra, the child dancers to the principals, the wig and make-up artists to the props department, The Nutcracker is the ultimate team effort.
Credit is thus due to Nick Sterne for an unorthodox casting that paid off in the volume of audience applause: now with several months of principal roles under her tutu, it was a surprise to see Patricia Errington back in the role of Clara and Aleksander Sylvan as her Hans-Peter, rather than the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince.
But Sterne knows exactly what he’s doing: the pair brought their natural chemistry from The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Rhapsody, and La Sylphide to the snow-dusted forest pas de deux of Act I.
Errington, who has always brought the requisite virginal innocence to past performances as Clara, looked overjoyed as Sylvan helped her take off from the stage like a Concorde jet rising from a runway.
Handsome in his red and white soldier’s uniform, Sylvan’s leaps and turns were impeccable as expected, without a breath wasted between steps.
His mime in the first scene of Act II, recounting the Mouse King battle, was articulated so fluently that one can only hope the BCBC will keep him on after retirement (distant may that day be) to instruct the younger artists.
His reunion with Jim Goldman as the aloof-but-loving Herr Drosselmeyer in the final scene matched Tchaikovsky’s magnificent sweep of closing notes for emotional depth: the son’s curse broken; a father’s faith in the world restored.
Of course, the other shining couple in this ballet was Grace Langham and Ray Novak.
Langham was as delicate and precise in her Sugar Plum steps as an ice crystal, while Novak’s lean lines and bright expressions made for a more memorable Prince than most. Their pas de deux is deceptively difficult and a cornerstone of the entire ballet; their combined talents and experience proved to be the ideal choice for opening night.
Among the 150-strong cast, James Eastman brought a delightful energy to the party scenes as Drosselmeyer’s assistant, bouncing around the stage like a robin.
The Act II divertissements were a delectable box of assorted treats, but the two standouts were – naturally – Sylvan leading a breathless yet stalwart Charles Meesters and Leo Kandemir in the crowd-pleasing Russian Dance, and Errington in petal-light synchronicity with the Mirlitons and their flutes.
December may have only just begun, and there are many more Nutcracker performances to come from all corners of the nation, but the BCBC’s version seems likely to be the crowning ornament on the 1986 Christmas tree.
The Nutcracker is in rep at the Covent Garden Dance Hall until 14 January, with varying casts.