DR. LUIS DIAS
The first and only time I watched a live ballet performance in Goa would have been in the early 1990s at the open-air auditorium, Kala Academy, Campal. It was a visiting troupe from the former
Soviet Union.
Goa’s cultural calendar has steadily declined since then, and nobody really seems to care, least of all the state’s self-styled ‘elite’ class.
So while we keep trying our best at Child’s Play with the means and resources we can muster, I have resigned myself to commuting to Mumbai for my own
spiritual nourishment.
What brought me to Mumbai earlier this month was something unique for India: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s evergreen 1892 two-act ‘Nutcracker’ ballet, a Christmas season favourite worldwide. And it would be performed on ice!
The Imperial Ice Stars, formed in 2004, has received rave reviews around the world for its productions of Tchaikovsky ballets (‘Nutcracker’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Swan Lake on Ice’) and other popular children’s tales (‘Fairy Tales’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Peter Pan on Ice’).
The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) at Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) has been celebrated and panned in equal measure since it opened to the public on March 31, 2023.
With its myriad entry gates in the eerie other-world that is BKC, it is a daunting experience just figuring out how to get into the NMACC while my rickshaw flits from one gate to another like a black-and-yellow bumblebee and the meter fare keeps mounting.
I find the NMACC décor and ambience far too garish and opulent for my taste.
Critics have dubbed it “culture as spectacle”, compared it to an airport terminal, and have rightly complained about the high prices.
But to be fair, in this instance, the starting price for tickets to ‘Nutcracker on Ice’ at NMACC were the same as those for the ‘Candlelight Concerts’ series offered at Goa’s Fort Aguada (or ‘Aguad’ now for whatever reason) featuring a solo pianist pounding out popular music on a grand piano.
Experiencing the sheer magic cast by a 28-strong ‘corps de ballet’ comprising expert figure-skating ice dances who have collectively won over 250 international medals, breathing exuberant life into Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score on a specially created temporary ice rink in a tropical setting is pretty good value for money.
Learning how the ice surface was created was an education in itself. Two 45-feet trucks were required to unload, with the help of 18 theatre technicians, not just the frame of the ice rink but also the costumes, sets, sound, and lighting equipment.
The assembling of the rink (that looks like “a giant baking tray”) begins a whole day before, in the morning for the next day’s rehearsal and performance. First a heavy-duty pool liner gets laid into the enclosure. Then an incredible 15 kilometres of piping is carefully laid evenly across the base of the tray, connected to header pipes and secured. This step is crucial, as if not done painstakingly, some sections of the rink will not freeze.
The header pipes are connected to chiller units outside the theatre and the circuit is filled with a mixture of glycol (antifreeze) and water. The chiller units are set to minus 15 degrees centigrade.
Once the outsides of the pipes frost over, four tonnes of crushed ice are layered over them to give a headstart to the ice-forming process. Overnight and over the next day, water is sprayed every 15 minutes until about three inches ice thickness is achieved. Periodic scraping of the surface and pouring hot water over it from time to time keep the surface as smooth as possible.
Among the many things my family brought back from Germany (then West Germany) when we relocated back to Goa in 1970, I treasure one Christmas ‘decoration’, a still-functional wooden nutcracker in the shape of’ Weihnachtsmann’ (literally ‘Christmas man’), the German term for Santa Claus.
The tradition of Nutcracker ‘dolls’ originated from late 17th-century Germany, in the Erzgebirge (‘Ore Mountains’) along the present Czech-German border.
Early iterations depicted authority figures, such as kings or soldiers, with stern faces to represent power and ward off evil spirits, protect homes, and bring good luck. They were also seen as a form of rebellion, in lampooning the authority figures that oppressed them.
Over time, they became associated with gift-giving and Christmas (which explains my Weihnachtsmann nutcracker).
They became even more popular after the Tchaikovsky ballet. The ballet is an adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 story ‘the Nutcracker and the Mouse King’, particularly its 1844 children-friendly retelling by Alexandre Dumas.
The Imperial Ice Stars made this timeless Christmastime classic even more magical, thrilling children and adults alike with their prowess on
the rink.
Artistic director Tony Mercer stayed faithful to the storyline and setting, with breathtaking backdrop sets and props to match.
At the family Christmas eve party, young Marie is presented a Nutcracker doll by her mysterious godfather Herr Drosselmeyer. In Marie’s dream that night, her doll is transformed into a handsome prince, who leads an army of soldiers against the might of the evil Mouse King. Mercer imaginatively adds a black and white cat to help Marie and the Prince defeat the
rodent horde.
The Prince and Marie then travel to the Land of Snowflakes and the Kingdom of Sweets where they are welcomed by the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Arguably the most-recognised tune in the ballet is the act 2 ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. It features the celesta, an instrument that so excited Tchaikovsky when he discovered it in Paris in 1891, five years after its invention. He described it to his publisher in a letter as “something between a piano and a glockenspiel, with a divinely beautiful tone”. He arranged for a celesta to be sent to
St. Petersburg in secret, as he was “afraid Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov might hear of it and make use of the new effect before I could. I expect the instrument will make a tremendous sensation”.
Some nice touches were the ‘disappearing act’ of Herr Drosselmeyer (I’m still not sure how it was accomplished), the ‘ring of fire’ on ice that encircles the Mouse King’s army, and their imprisonment in a giant ‘mousetrap’ cage that removes them from the stage.
Every show of ‘Nutcracker on Ice’ was sold out, with about half the seats occupied by little children on booster cushions to help them see better, chaperoned by parents or guardians.
According to the brochure, “Some of the skating moves performed by The Imperial Ice Stars have never been attempted before, either in competition or on the stage (not even at the Sochi 2014 Olympics) and are so complex they haven’t been
named yet”.
Kudos to the Imperial Ice Stars and their creative and choreographic team for being able to exploit the relatively tiny ice rink to the fullest. Their gravity-defying acrobatic lifts and leaps (and a trapeze that lets Marie literally take flight towards the end) drew gasps and applause.
Hoffmann’s story has been psychoanalysed to death, and Tchaikovsky’s ballet accused of racial stereotyping (particularly the Tea and Coffee dances depicting Chinese and ‘Arabian’ dancers respectively in Act 2) but it hasn’t diminished its appeal more than a century later.
