Weekend Reviews : Dance : L.A. Classical Ballet Opens ‘Nutcracker’

Children are placed at the heart of the Los Angeles Classical Ballet’s familiar “Nutcracker,” dancing--yes, actually dancing--at every possible opportunity. Yet the performance of the work that opened the run Friday at a less-than-full Terrace Theater in Long Beach did not exactly speak from the heart to the heart.

Blame too many of the adult principals dancing on automatic pilot or else seeming to aspire to an imagined Russian-style hauteur. Perhaps the sometimes speedy conducting of Roger Hickman discomfited them.

At any rate, even the otherwise warm Sugar Plum Fairy of Galina Shlyapina could not wholly vanquish this impression. Her lanky, conscientious Cavalier (and Nutcracker Prince) Hagop Kharatian appeared consumed by haughtiness.

This year, the production, choreographed by David Wilcox, Terri Lewis and Alexander Kalinin, still suffered from the potentially impressive growth of the Christmas tree that once more transpired in lighting too dim to observe it clearly. But this time there was a live children’s chorus, singing in the auditorium to the left of the stage to enhance the Snow Scene.

The Trepak again ran twice its allotted length through an unsanctioned, if deftly executed musical repeat, and the vibrant dancing of the genuine Russians--Alexander Kalinin, Ozzie Azarian and Andrei Baczynskyj--galvanized the audience. The Sugar Plum Fairy’s Variation, on the other hand, once more ran short because the coda had been excised.

Among the other soloists, Svetlana Epifanova made an emotionally remote Snow Queen who showed some technical insecurities, enhanced perhaps by the weak, chancy partnering of Oleg Trussov. Tzer-Shing Wang danced the Dew Drop Fairy, however, with attractive phrasing, and the young Melissa Watson danced Clara with obvious delight.

The limber Julia Ellis as the maid provided interpolated comic relief (you didn’t know there was comedy in the “Nutcracker”?).

Dudley Davies made a kindly old Drosselmeyer, mugging apparently less than was reported in previous seasons. Besides him, however, many characters, including the children, looked more than healthily aware of the audience. The overtaxed corps danced with cautious precision.

Performances continue at the Terrace Theater through Dec. 23.