Dance Christmas ballet "Nutcracker" in Basel as a dark dream play
The new Basel ballet director Marco Goecke has stripped Tchaikovsky's popular ballet "The Nutcracker" of any sugar-coating. At the premiere on Saturday, however, much of the newly told story remained vague.
14.12.2025, 13:03
14.12.2025, 13:04
SDA
"The Nutcracker" is actually Christmas kitsch of the purest kind. It tells the story of a nutcracker who is transformed into a prince through the devotion of the girl Marie. It takes us to the realm of sweets, where we can enjoy dance numbers from all over the world.
This ballet, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1892 to music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, offers scope for catchy dance numbers with lots of tutus in a splendidly colorful setting.
This used to be the case at Theater Basel. Every Christmas, the eleven students of the Basel Ballet School danced to the colorful "Little Nutcracker". Since the end of the school, this has come to an end. This gave theater director Benedikt von Peter the idea of commissioning his new ballet director Marco Goecke with a new "Nutcracker" - knowing full well that icing and tutu kitsch are not the internationally renowned choreographer's cup of tea.
Back to E. T. A. Hoffmann
Goecke went back to the literary original by the German Romantic poet E. T. A. Hoffmann, which had been heavily softened in the original ballet. In his "Nutcracker", the story became a gloomy dream play in an empty, dark room and without the colourful costumes that make the Nutcracker, the Rat King, the Sugar Plum Fairy and all the other fairy-tale characters clearly recognizable as such.
This does not make it easy to follow the newly told story. On balance, however, the ballet evening impresses with its brilliant ensemble and Goecke's shimmering, staccato and energetic dance language, which he was able to realize astonishingly well to Tchaikovsky's magically light music.
