La di da da da.

Mmm vacation.

Last night -- inbetween moving stuff to the apartment, hanging out at the dorm and sitting around at home with Katya and Misha and their friends -- I had a little outing by myself to see The Nutcracker, again, but this time at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Olga had told me that the production at the Mikhailovsky was much more classical compared to the Mariinsky's which is strange and modern. I guess in some ways this is the case. The Mariinsky does have a passion for pink and black costuming along with bright and artificially colored wigs, but I don't know. I preferred this production, at least aesthetically, just looking at it, because it was more coordinated. For example, for each of the dancers of the different countries in the third act -- at the Mikhailovsky they all wore insanely different costumes that looked kind of odd and clashed when they danced together, while at the Mariinsky they all still wore different things to represent their countries, but all had the same black/whites or pinks/reds or silver/golds or light blues and blended beautifully. I also preferred the costumes for the waltz of the flowers at the Mariinsky -- softer pink with white instead of magenta and bright green -- which you can see in the photograph below which I stole from the Mariinsky's website. Comparing it to the photographs in the other Nutcracker entry which I took from the Mikhailovsky's website, you can see the difference already.


Other differences about the production: there were fewer children in the audience (though the place was completely and 100% full, I have never seen the Mariinsky like that before. I also appeared to be sitting in the middle of a tour group of attractive blonde people speaking a language I couldn't identify [Dutch? Czech? Something Scandinavian?] and a British family on my left who I was eavesdropping on until Lauren called me and I blew my cover by speaking in English), but in the production children actually did the dancing instead of older teenagers pretending to be children. They also had a real doll for the Nutcracker in the first act, a small boy with a false nose and a fake beard playing the Nutcracker in the second act, and then a grown dancing man playing the Nutcracker prince in the third act.

Ilana, you will also be interested to know, that as they did not have a person playing a Nutcracker doll in the first act they did the dance of the doll "негр" which was a small guy in black face. God, the Mariinsky has absolutely no problems with black face. They also had a white guy playing one of the Chinese people and did his make up in a way some people might have found offensive, but the female Chinese dance dancer was a guest artist from Japan, so I guess they felt that made up for it (....).

As for the quality of the dancing, I'm no Ilana Tabby, I can't make a professional judgement, but I would say the dancers who played the dolls were actually stronger at the Mikhailovsky, but in general, everyone was better at the Mariinsky. Also, the Mariinsky orchestra is the best orchestra in the city, I am certain. From my oddly angled, high up seat on the 3rd balcony (I was in the bench seating where I have never sat before) I had a perfect view of the double bass section and found it funny when in the 2nd act they had to cram in a whole youth chorus around the four of them to sing in the dance of the snowflakes. You may wonder how I could see this as I am known to not be one with strong, far-distance vision. Well, I tell you, this is because yet again I forgot my glasses, and so I finally broke down and splurged and rented opera glasses for the show. It was great, man I should always do that. I could actually see the dancer's faces! Heyyoo! I also spent a lot of time using them to examine the sets which consisted of a lot of white trees and glitter, but also a really nice lighting technique that made it look like it was snowing.

So, that was the Nutcracker at the Mariinsky.

I won't be updating again for a couple of days as tonight I leave for a small city two thirds of the way between Petersburg and Moscow for a WELLESLEY RUSSIAN DEPARTMENT REUNION.