There, Clara (a well-cast Elise Pickert) is properly delighted; her mischievous brother (Madison Luna) caught up with envy in a scene where only Amaya Rodriguez stands out as the presiding lady of the house with grace and grandeur. The focus often turns to the cheap visual joke or rump-shaking winks to the audience, including an exaggeratedly wobbly set of grandparents (Georgia Fuller and Gabriel Lorena).
Things move pretty fast in this “Nutcracker” with a swiftly decided war of the toy soldiers vs. the mice – featuring oversized rodents who oversell every slapstick move or TikTok style shimmy for audience laughs.
Transport to the Kingdom of Snow and Land of Sweets is classy – first by sleigh and then by hot air balloon.
Drosselmeier himself, in his swooping cape, becomes something of a bat, flying through the scenes when he’s not hovering in the background, turning into that ultimate holiday party guest who will never leave.
Great care and detail is taken in the elaborate and fanciful sets by Alain Vaës, but the best of them is the long perspective, gumdrop-flecked Land of the Sweets, onto which the array of favorite dances unfolds.
If there’s one thing a bit lacking in this crowd-pleasing array of candy-colored sets, swirling costumes (by Holly Hynes)and large cast with added stuffed animals, it’s dance itself.
The sheer popularity “The Nutcracker” is great enough to fund many a ballet company’s whole season, while fueling countless youngster’s future dreams of dance. But the irony in the Kansas City production is that there is so little spectacular dance on display.
Even in the serious showcases by the the Sugar Plum Fairy and Her Cavalier (Kaleena Burks and James Kirby Rogers) it seems more an array of respectful poses and careful spins than anything than grand movement.
One drawback of seeing “The Nutcracker” every season is recalling how past dancers have risen to the score’s swelling crescendos in other productions, while these prettily attired figures stay pretty close to the ground. Unfettered in his own solo showcase, Rogers, notably the one guest artist borrowed from the Pacific Northwest Ballet, briefly brings some excitement, but such moments are rare.
Kelsey Ivana Hellebuyck is alluring in her dance of the Coffee, but maybe it’s a lapse of choreography that half her attendants don’t have much to do.
Even the affable jocks in the Russian trio didn’t do the kind of kicks one imagined were ingrained in the segment.
Whatever technical lapses are nearly irrelevant to the occasion though – a colorful kickoff to the holiday season brought by scores of dancers, a full Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra conducted by Ramona Pansegrrau, and an Arlington Children’s Chorus, 80 members of which are credited in the online program (but who could be heard so faintly, they seemed to be singing in an adjoining theater).
It’s production that goes out of its way to please the audience, and the crowd is only too pleased to receive it like a treasured gift.
Kansas City Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, continues through Nov. 27 at the John F. Kennedy Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC.