Nutcracker in Havana

Festival Theatre 3/2/26

 Acosta Danza and Acosta Danza Yunior, director Carlos Acosta

Original score by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, arrangement and orchestration by Pepe Gavilondo and Yasel Muñoz

Christmas was banned in Cuba for nearly thirty years from 1969, so the young Carlos Acosta did not get to celebrate the many magical traditions of the season. However, he has certainly made up for it now. Having danced in many productions of The Nutcracker, he decided to create a truly Cuban version set in 1998, the first Christmas after the ban was lifted as the result of a visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II.

 Clever use of projection has the audience flying through the streets of Havana in the snow, following Tió (Uncle) Eliàs Drosselmayer (Alexander Varona) in his 1957 Chevy Corvette as he returns to his family after thirty years in Miami. Welcomed back to the humble family home, he distributes presents with a flourish of magic. These presents include three life sized dolls that dance jerkily with each other and, of course, a toy Nutcracker for his niece Clara (Thalia Cardin). The Nutcracker is dressed as a Cuban mambi (freedom fighter), complete with tiny machete. The family join in a traditional Cuban dance using wooden chancletas (clogs) to emphasise the energetic, carefree rhythm. Instead of the traditional and formal grand dance in elegant surroundings found in other productions of the Nutcracker, this is a warm family celebration in a simple home.

 Night falls, everyone goes to bed, but then comes a rodent attack. The plucky Nutcracker and his mambi mates battle the fiendish Rat King and his hench-rats, Clara bops the Rat King on the head with her chancleta and saves the day, and the Nutcracker becomes a Prince (Dani Hernandez). Just like that.

Then Clara and the Prince dance, their traditional pas de deux contrasting with the freer, more contemporary movements of the flurry of human snowflakes swirling around them. The classic car then carries the two of them off to the Kingdom of Sweets and Act II.

 The music is recorded, which is a pity as we lose the immediacy and impact a live band delivers. However, a great deal of attention has gone into this music, arranged from Tchaikovsky’s original score by the two Cuban composers Pepe Gavilondo and Yasel Muñoz, and recorded in Havana by an experienced ensemble of Cuban musicians and singers. This is not just a classical score given a superficial makeover in another tradition. It is music carefully and sensitively picked apart and then re-woven, incorporating the tunes, rhythms, and instruments of Cuba to create a new experience for dancers and audience alike. Sometimes Tchaikovsky wins out, sometimes the Cuban tunes prevail, but Cuban rhythms course throughout the ballet.

 In Act II the Kingdom of Sweets is transformed into a Cuban jazz club, where a series of dances unfolds. After a Spanish dance and a hypnotic and sinuous Arabian dance, three mysterious mirlitons execute a wild cha-cha-chá. With their slightly out of focus costumes accompanied by music featuring fuzzy horns, the whole effect seemed a little hallucinatory. Too much Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, perhaps?

Often Clara is portrayed as a mere puppet; a passive rather than an active character. Here she has agency and personality; she reacts and interacts with the various dancers, and duets with the agile Russian dancer.

After a superb Chinese dance where the two dancers amaze with mixed martial arts in an athletic tangle of limbs, tutus are to the fore with the Flower Dance, showcasing traditional choreography and Tchaikovsky’s music blended with a swinging rhythm.

Clara and Tió Eliàs then proceed to teach the dancers a traditional Cuban dance with chancletas. At first they all dance in their original styles until encouraged to cast off their preconceptions and inhibitions and dance the Cuban way, stamping their chancletas to produce infectious rhythms and using their whole bodies in a simple, joyous experience.

Then everyone settle at tables scattered around the stage to watch the Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy (Anette Delgado), the music slow and smoky with a gentle jazzy rhythm. Finally,  all the characters gather behind gauzy curtain to wave farewell to Clara and to us.

 The dancers from Acosta Danza and the younger dancers from Acosta Danza Yunior show great technical ability and enthusiasm, mastering both traditional ballet forms and contemporary moves at the same time.

When thinking about this production the word that kept coming back to me was transformation. The traditional Nutcracker is full of transformations, most notably of toys into people. The Nutcracker in Havana transforms the traditional setting and story, moving it from Europe to Cuba, from the cold to the warm, from a formal European Christmas to the first joyous celebration after the ban.

Despite the snow and ice, this is a warm Nutcracker in every sense of the word, with Cuban passion melting the ice of the traditional European tale.

photo credit: Tristram Kenton