 |
Welcome to the 2007 Dance-Along Nutcracker: Ratified!, the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band’s 20th production of the quirky holiday favorite.
The musical core of each year’s Dance-Along Nutcracker is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, the collection of fairyland and confectionary dances performed for Clara and her Nutcracker prince in the second half of the beloved ballet. This Fantasia-fodder is the music the audience dance troupe cuts a caper to throughout the Dance-Along, pirouetting and leaping beneath the spotlights of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Because only the Suite portion of Tchaikovsky’s score has been arranged for wind ensemble, the Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum soundtrack must be rounded out with other music. So each year, the artistic director - this year the Band’s new Artistic Director Roberto-Juan González – selects music for the feature performances that complements the show’s theme. These performances separate dance-along segments, giving the audience a chance to catch its breath and see something spectacular or maybe even a little Vaudeville or La Cage along the way.
This year, the Dance-Along puts a new twist in the Nutcracker’s tale, when the rats seize the microphone and explain their version of events at the Stahlbaum’s holiday party. This year when the audience cast takes to the dance floor, they’ll find themselves pirouetting before Uncle Drosselmeyer at the Stahlbaum’s party or marching among furry comrades around the Christmas tree. This year, don’t be surprised if the musicians appear costumed like rats, wooden toys, Russian Cossacks or fairy princesses, or if the conductor’s tails are a bit, well, other than standard for the podium.
Not surprisingly, any classic ballet staged by an LGBT Sousa band (and its audience) is bound to take a few twists from the plot of the original ballet. While the storyline’s perspective might meander from the original, the spirit of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas story remains intact. Look at the plot of this beloved ballet, and you realize it’s difficult to get any more fantastical than the original text. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker showcases a fantasy dreamscape where toy soldiers fight with rats, and a succession of international bonbons and flowers dance for the entertainment of Clara and her literal boy-toy prince, all set to the popular and world music of Tchaikovsky’s day. The original Nutcracker is at its core a celebration of fantasy and dreamscapes. The Dance-Along calls adults and children alike to don costumes, and with a wave of their tinsel wands, to tap their fantasies and take their place on stage as the show’s key characters, as central to the story’s plot as their imaginations allow.
|
Joy in the Dance
It was Dance-Along 1997. The sultry, snake-charmer tones of oboe and tambourine faded, the lights of the "All Dance" sign dimmed, and the packed floor of urban Arabian Dancers sifted back to their seats. The conductor, in black tie and tails, barely started the next introduction, when a tiny fairy princess slipped free from her mom and drifted, dead center, up the now-empty dance floor to the podium. She must've been three years old and not three feet high, dressed to the teeth in a white lace ballet costume with rhinestone tiara – a Cindy Lu Who in tulle - and she stood tiny and fearless, smack in front of the conductor. The conductor bent down, microphone in hand, to ask what the tot needed. The tiny girl chirped into the mike, "We have Fantasia," as though she already owned the show, and skipped off into the crowd, her message delivered, as the audience chortled its surprise.
This scene is the very stuff of every Dance-Along Nutcracker. Each year, the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band’s conductor assembles a core cavalcade of musicians, singers, dancers and spotlights with enough color and pizzazz to entertain even the most clay-footed of lumber -jacks and -jills. The cast's talent aside, though, the truth is that the hands-down most memorable moments are unplanned and come from the audience.
When the tiny girl skipped to the podium, she knew the show was hers to steal, that her proper place was center stage, and that's precisely the point. It's the impromptu choreography; the crowd's brazen, self-appointed prima ballerinas; the sudden meshing of giant dancing snowflakes and soldier ranks among strangers that inevitably charms. Past stars unlisted in any program have included the flock of baby ballerinas who mirrored en masse the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pirouette; the bearded guy who parked his tucas on a chair to do Russian Cossack's kicks with arms folded; the woman in Nutcracker drag who led the full audience in the march of the soldiers; the orange-gauzy butterfly lady with wings so magnificent children followed her wide-eyed to watch them sway as she danced; the urban ballerina in high-tops who was hiked up onto friends' shoulders with fairy wands waving for a solo grand-finale entrance; the queen with tinsel hair to his waist who spun and whisked among dancers, shiny hair flying; the bearded ballet troupe in pink tulle, fuscia lipstick, and chrome-‘n-rhinestone tiaras performing lifts and dying swan imitations.
The magic of this Nutcracker is simple. In a society that increasingly treats art as polished product and financial investment, this show reminds us of the joy of joining in the dance. Although the audience is never required to join in—and there are always die-hards who enjoy the view from their seats—press accounts invariably quote neophyte dancers who swore up and down they would only watch, but couldn't help themselves. The Dance-Along celebrates participation in a way that makes it safe for anyone to raise their arms, lift up their voice or kick up their heels. It's a show in which a community band expands its boundaries to include the talents of its audience, and the result is a gift to everyone present.
A San Francisco Original
The Dance-Along Nutcracker was first performed by the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band in 1985 at San Francisco’s Gift Center Pavilion, and 21 years later, it remains one of the City’s most celebrated, offbeat holiday events. Concocted in the spirit of the “Sing-It-Yourself Messiah” by Wayne Fleisher, director of the S.F. Tap Troupe, and first conducted by the Band’s then-conductor, Jay Kast, the Dance-Along Nutcracker has since been featured on “Good Morning, America,” “The Today Show,” HG-TV’s “Christmas Across America,” as well as in the Wall Street Journal, The Ladies’ Home Journal and Curve Magazine, and was included in an article by Dorothy Allison in Harper’s Bazaar. In 2002, the City of Chicago first licensed the rights from the SFL/GFB to launch its own Dance-Along Nutcracker, and this year, the Chicago Cultural Center will present its 5th production of the Windy City’s Dance-Along. Who knows where Dance-Along mania may spread to next?
|
