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Christmas Joy at Hamilton place.Cuban National Ballet celebrates Festival Season with the Nutcracker |
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Monday, 24 November 2008 |
PASTOR VALLE-GARAY / HAMILTON /
It promises to be one of the best performances ever of The Nutcracker. The lavish fairy tale traditionally linked with the Christmas holidays arrives in Hamilton in all its splendour and in a festive mood in less than three weeks.
For the second consecutive year the 60 dancers of the Cuban National Ballet will stage visions of Sugar Plums and Snow Queens on Friday, December 12 at 7:30 PM; on Saturday December 13 at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM and on Sunday, December 14 at 2:00 PM at the Hamilton Place Theatre.
According to its artistic director, the performance certainly sounds like a truly special occasion. “It is a privilege to close our season at Hamilton, a ‘broche de oro’ (the golden finishing touch), as it were, for our company,” declared Alicia Alonso at a press conference in Havana. According to Madame Alonso, Cuba’s legendary Prima Ballerina Assoluta and artistic director of the Cuban National Ballet, “it is most appropriate that we stage our final performance of the season in the city that has always made us feel so warm and so much at home.
“At a time when we face so much uncertainty, The Nutcracker is the fantasy par excellence. It provides children and adults with a breath of fresh air and with an opportunity to look for optimism and hope which is what Christmas is all about. This year our company has seen many of its dreams come true. We have fulfilled our hopes beyond our wildest expectations. We have demonstrated that even a small nation ravaged by hurricanes and natural disasters can be inspired through our performances at home and abroad to reach for the top and to overcome daunting obstacles. Under these circumstances our dancers now conclude one of the most successful years in the history of our ballet. As a special gesture to our Canadian friends we wanted to extend our celebration to Canada and hopefully bring a measure of optimism to the audience.”
Alicia Alonso means every word of it. For 10 days in October Madame Alonso and the Cuban National Ballet hosted the International Festival of Ballet in Havana in a series of Gala events celebrating the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Cuban National Ballet and honouring Madame Alonso, the ballet’s founder and The Nutcracker’s choreographer. Many of the world’s most renowned dancers and ballet companies from 19 nations performed before full-house audiences all over the island which included among its most enthusiastic supporters Cuban President Raúl Castro as well as a large contingent of international dignitaries.
“For Hamilton the presentation of the Nutcracker is simply a unique, rare, magnificent occasion,” declared Belma Gurdil-Diamante, CEO of the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble, host, organizers and participants of the Nutcracker program. “We are absolutely thrilled. Hamilton welcomes one of the five best ballet companies in the world and the Cuban National Ballet is staging one of the most beautiful and popular classical works at precisely the very peak of their performances. We could not ask for a better Christmas gift.”
A highlight of the spectacular event will be the participation of one hundred and one Hamilton children from the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble who will join on stage the Cuban dancers in a performance they will surely remember for years to come. The children will dance the coveted roles of the little mice in the fairy tale choreographed by Alicia Alonso on the original by Lev Ivanov, music by Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, script by Marius Petipa and adapted from Alexandre Dumas´ story of The Nutcracker and the King of Mice.
Maestro Giovanni Duarte, conductor of the National Ballet of Cuba, will conduct the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Dance critic Gary Smith will present a 45 minutes talk before the show.
Tickets are available COPPS Coliseum Box Office; Ticketmaster.ca; or (905) 546-4040; hecfi.ca; www.cbye.ca.
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