Delightful Dance Twist on a Christmas Classic

Students put on a fun, re-imagined Nutcracker show

This evening we went to see "Mixed Nuts", a performance put on by the dance students at Arts Umbrella at the Vancouver Playhouse. Instead of the traditional take on the Christmas classic The Nutcracker, this one is reimagined and features not only ballet, but also modern dance and some contemporary elements like hockey and snowboarding!

The students range in age from teens to early 20s, with the latter taking on most of the dances, mostly ballet in the second half. The story has Clara and a "godfather" Drosselmeyer character, but it's actually a cross-dressing male dancer, dressed in a frilly blouse and black coat and strutting in high heels. After the intermission he becomes like a fairy godmother in a white dress, again in those white heels.

Male and female parts are danced by both the young men and women in the corps -- the girls have their hair pinned up and wear trousers and shirts, or in some parts the boys don a skirt with leggings underneath. There's even a sugar plum fairy dance -- and there's a male fairy complete with wings and a tiara like the others.

This dance was inspired by peppermint swirls

The theme is candy, so dances are inspired by peppermint swirls, Hershey's Kisses, cupcakes, gingerbread men and black licorice.

The gender-bending playful show is fantastic, normalising the opportunity for young men and women to dance each others' roles. That said, the line stops at the classical ballet dances, where they dance their traditional parts.

One dance featured the can-can, and the audience couldn't help but clap along, while they laughed as two (female) dancers pretended to be hockey players comically fighting each other. 

We sat at the third last row (the row behind us was empty, and the last row were the instructors and a video and cameraman). As the show progressed, the teachers were unabashed in praising their students out loud, while the audience, mostly made of parents and relatives of the performers clapped or hollered.

Most of the dancers looked like they enjoyed themselves on stage. One pas de deux featuring an Asian girl was fantastic and she smiled as she nailed all her moves. That dance reminded me of what made me love about ballet when I was a child, but also all the hard work that goes into being able to dance like that!

Partway through the show, I couldn't help thinking, these kids are going to be alright. They demonstrated how hard they had worked on the show; they apparently know all the parts and are assigned which ones they will dance just before the performance starts. 

Amazing.