Review

If it’s Christmas, it must be The Nutcracker. Around the world, given a handful of dancers and a whiff of Tchaikovsky, this ancient ritual is re-enacted as a tribute to some seasonal thing or other. (As a frightful statistic, I record that in America no less than 200 productions – of varying degrees of amateurishness – emerge at this time of year.) Few, in my own chequered experience, do any honour to The Nutcracker’s essentials of poetic charm. So let me salute the happy version now on view in Hong Kong.

The staging is by Stephen Jefferies, and is blissfully traditional. Which means that the tale is honestly told, decently choreographed (by Jefferies), and prettily set by Peter Farmer in Edwardian times and that there are no gimmicks or psychological baubles decorating the narrative. And the score is honestly played by the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Jefferies has been director of the company for eight years, and has built a well-mannered and enthusiastic ensemble – the dance is as vital and aspiring as its city and, just as one finds traditional street markets cheek by jowl with the dizzying vistas of skyscrapers, so this Nutcracker asserts the traditional delights of the old ballet.

Principal and soloist roles were done with unabashed pleasure, and I much enjoyed Faye Leung and Nobuo Fujino as the Sugar Plum and her Prince – the dance well-shaped, bright in outline. Jefferies’s treatment of the dread sweetmeats in act two is a triumph of ingenuity over the predictable – there is an Arabian dance with some saucy touches, and a splendidly vivacious Spanish number which makes Don Quixote seem sober-sided.

The second cast brought a further revelation: the presence of Wang Qimin as a guest ballerina from the National Ballet of China. There are moments when the critical eye is suddenly caught by something quite out of the ordinary. I have made no secret of my admiration for Chinese ballet in the past, and in Wang Qimin I recognize a talent of exceptional merit. A beautiful and delicate physique, serene technique, are allied to that mysterious assurance which has ever touched dancers of nascent greatness. Music guides her, not just in phrasing but in emotion, too, and movement flows through her, is shown to us, and delights us by its inevitability. She has a rare gift and, please Heaven, the future is bright. That she was so well set off by the Hong Kong Ballet says much for the fine qualities of the troupe.