Urban Ballet Theater’s Andres Gonzalez and Christopher Hunter casted in Dance Mixx’ first annual Nutcracker.
Brookdale Community College – Performing Arts Center; 761 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft, (732) 224-2411; www.brookdale.cc.nj.us/pages/124.asp
Call www.dancemixxstudio.com at 732-747-6507 or email dancemixxstudio@gmail.com to purchase tickets. https://twitter.com/DanceMixxStudio
Steps on Broadway
2121 Broadway @ 74th Street
New York, NY 10023
212-874-2410
Advanced Intermediate Ballet
Monday, Wednesday & Friday 2:30-4:00pm.
Nationally Mr. Catanach has been invited to create work and conduct master classes for Ballet Lubbock, Dallas Repertoire Ballet, Delaware Dance Company, York Dance Alliance, Kansas City Ballet and NORD/NOBA Center for Dance in New Orleans.
More about Daniel Catanach
$30 PER DVD
Nutcracker in the Lower combines the classic story of Clara and her magical adventures with elements of Manhattan’s cultural diversity. The Party Scene, traditionally depicted as an opulent 19th-century ball, becomes a holiday salsa party.
The Battle Scene takes place in a crumbling subway station as gigantic krumping rats and stylized hip hop toy soldiers wage war while the heroine’s fate lies in limbo. Native American and African styles reinvent the Angels and Arabian divertissements of the Second Act.
The production retains the traditional grace of classical ballet in the delicate Snow Pas de Deux and Waltz of the Flowers, and the Cavalier and Sugar Plum Fairy is a romantic interpretation of Clara’s idealized family.
Traditional Flamenco and Asian fan and ribbons dancers add dynamic cultural authenticity in the Spanish and Chinese segments. Clara’s journey through these scenarios echo the audience’s own eye opening experience.
$40 FOR DVD & T-SHIRT
Photo credit: Radiant Amar/Urban Ballet Theater.
Editor’s note: Today we’re pleased to welcome New York writer Royal Young as a regular columnist on The Lo-Down. Royal contributes literary coverage to Interview Magazine and the new web site Holy Diver. Young recently completed “Fame Shark,” his memoir. After six years living in exile (in Brooklyn), this Lower East Side native is back in his natural habitat, rediscovering the old neighborhood.
As a kid in the early ‘90s, I spent my time haunting the halls of Henry Street Settlement and the backstage at the Abrons Arts Center, chasing the creative energy that pulsed through those corridors. Now that energy has exploded on the Abrons’ stage with the Urban Ballet Theatre presenting their 10th anniversary run of “Nutcracker in the Lower.” A modern, Lower East Side take on the classic Christmas tale, this urban Nutcracker is bursting with life and longing. Following Clara, a lonely young girl who’s father has disappeared, leaving her only a collection of soldier style dolls, the colorful production whirls into fantasy when she falls asleep beneath a patchwork, glittering pine tree.
From the mutant, breakdancing rats of the Grand Street subway station, to the Williamsburg Bridge looming ghostly in paper snow, the youthful dancers that populate Clara’s dream life are vibrant, representing the diverse residents of her neighborhood. Sultry Flamenco stompers and elegant African queens share the stage with wild Russian sword swingers and a feisty drag queen-esque Mama Fruita spewing children from under her gowns. Clara follows a regal real-life Nutcracker through these surreal adventures, often embellishing Tchaikovsky’s original score with drums and hip hop beats, ballet taken to the streets.
“Nutcracker in the Lower” will be at the Abrons Arts Center through December 4th, with a rotating cast of young talent.
Join us in celebrating 10 years!
Directed and choreographed by Daniel Catanach.
Tickets: $100, $250, $500
“Exuberance and sweetness carry the day.” Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
Dream Catcher $100 Donation
Complimentary Benefit Admission
Complimentary After Party Admission
Performance Program/Website Acknowledgment
Snow Queen $250 Donation
All Dream Catcher Benefits Plus:
Performance Souvenir T-shirt
Preferred Seating
Sugar Plum $500 Donation
All Snow Queen Benefits Plus:
VIP Seating
Special Backstage Cast Introduction
To commemorate the 10th annual season of Nutcracker in the Lower a 10th performance has been added to the lineup, featuring Special Guest Urban Ballet Theater Alumni including Amar Ramasar of the New York City Ballet and 10 years of returning cast members. Following the performance, audience members are invited onstage to celebrate and relive the Nutcracker in the Lower, joining the Party Scene with cast members.
Urban Ballet Theater is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization and your contribution is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. The non-deductible portion of this evening’s after party/performance ticket is $30.
Tickets are $20 for all other performances:
November 26 & 27; December 3 & 4
3 pm
November 26 & 30; December 1-3
7:30 pm
To purchase tickets visit theatermania.com or call 212-352-3101.
For information and group sales please call (212) 598-0400 x222, or visit abronsartscenter.org.
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street at Pitt Street; New York, NY 10002.
abronsartscenter.org
Trains: F/M or J/Z to Delancey/Essex; B/D to Grand Street.
Support the 10th Annual Performance of Nutcracker in the Lower by connecting, following and sharing: NutcrackerintheLower.org, Facebook and Twitter.
To make a tax-deductible donation if you are not able to make the 10th annual season of Nutcracker in the Lower, please visit urbanballettheater.org and support securely with PayPal.
About Urban Ballet Theater
Urban Ballet Theater was formed to develop ballet and other performance projects that give voice to artists and performers expressing a unique vision of urban life, the inner city and all aspects of contemporary society. Company members are emerging artists and performers whose work creates contemporary, relatable figures and urban storytelling. UBT coordinates public performances of such projects to a vast range of audiences, particularly those outside the traditional ballet and theater audiences. For more information visit urbanballettheater.org.
About the Abrons Arts Center
The Abrons Arts Center is a division of Henry Street Settlement, which has provided socialservices and artistic programming to Manhattan’s Lower East Side since 1893. Abrons opened in1975 to house Henry Street’s visual and performing arts alongside its community-based arts training. The performing arts program inherits the century-long legacy of the Neighborhood Playhouse, where some of the most adventurous artists have trained, taught, or performed, including Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Dizzy Gillespie, Martha Graham, Philip Glass, Alicia Keyes, Alwin Nikolais, Lou Reed, Denzel Washington, and Orson Welles. Today Abrons’ programming includes modern dance, new music, avant-jazz, burlesque, cabaret, experimental theater, and all manners of downtown performance. The Artist Workspace Program provides performing artists with free rehearsal space to develop challenging new projects and mount public showings of these works-in-progress. For more information visit abronsartscenter.org.
Tenth Anniversary Year
November 26-December 4, 2011
Tuesday-Friday | 7:30 pm
Saturday | 3 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday | 3 pm
TICKETS: $20, Benefit Pricing $100, $250, $500 |
Krumping rats and popping soldiers, crooked hats, and The Nutcracker, re-imagined by the Urban Ballet Theater, will never be the same. Abrons hosts Nutcracker in the Lower for its 10th-anniversary year, establishing a cultural tradition that is as diverse as it is relevant. Daniel Catanach, Artistic Director of UBT, is acclaimed for his movement vocabulary that innovates storytelling for both children and adults.
Nutcracker in the Lower explodes with daring and delight, twisting the classic story of Clara and her magical adventures to reflect Manhattan’s cultural diversity. The party scene, traditionally depicted as an opulent 19th-century ball, becomes a holiday salsa fiesta. The battle scene can easily be imagined in a crumbling subway station as gigantic mice and crisp toy soldiers wage war over the heroine’s fate. The production retains the traditional grace of classical ballet in the delicate “Snow Pas de Deux” and “Waltz of the Flowers.” The Cavalier and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is a Romantic interpretation of Clara’s idealized family. Clara’s journey through these tableaux echo the audience’s own experience through this new interpretation.
Tchaikovsky’s original score remains largely intact throughout the ballet, injected with the baselines of hip-hop and the burnished cante of flamenco. UBT’s representation of such diversity is not only intentional, but also a natural expression of the multilayered community of artists in the Lower East Side.
Photo by John Ruocco
“Nutcrackers” come high and low. One day I’m watching one in a Newport, R.I., mansion. The next, I’m watching “Nutcracker in the Lower,” danced by Urban Ballet Theater at the Abrons Arts Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
The production – conceived, directed and choreographed by Daniel Catanach — seems to welcome ideas from multiple sources, including the Balanchine and Mark Morris versions, but it makes its own world. “Nutcracker” is often staged as a little girl’s dream; but has that dream ever had the pathos it acquires in “Nutcracker in the Lower”?
During the overture – taped, very loud – we see Clara happy with her parents; but then her father retreats offstage, and we understand his wife is now a widow. Within seconds, she starts work as a maid to Clara’s aunt; and both she and Clara take on a Cinderella existence, inferior members of a prosperous household.
But in Clara’s dream marvels unfold, and at the climax, her father comes back from the dead to partner her mother in the great adagio in Act 2. This grand music may never have been so much a love duet before. Mom, in this dream, is a real Sugar Plum Fairy in a tutu, Dad her Cavalier, dancing classical-adagio steps and lifts — but they also take time to gaze into each other’s eyes, to caress each other, to embrace.
When they start to separate, is he returning to the afterlife? Clara stands up and, with gestures, desperately urges them to stay together. Which, for the rest of the scene, they do. As the ballet ends, Clara wakes to find in her arms the toy Nutcracker put there by the strange but benevolent Drosselmeyer. It was a good dream.
There are a few moments when the production almost comes unstuck, and these are all when it doesn’t trust Tchaikovsky. (Some techno music is superimposed on the battle scene; another scene stops for drumming and chanting.) But there are other passages when it actually makes me hear new things in the music: staging the reed-pipe Mirlitons as a Turkish Delight dance with a belly-dancer may sound daft, but makes witty sense of Tchaikovsky’s rhythms and orchestration.
Apparently this production has undergone a few changes over time, including my favorite one this year: in the Act 1 party scene, the action stops while a little boy onstage takes up his solo violin and plays the Grossvaterdance. (Tchaikovsky didn’t write this – it’s the best-known of his “Nutcracker” borrowings, and also occurs in Schumann’s “Papillons”).
Both children and adults are irresistible performers, less wonderful as pure dancers. The men jump high without pointing their feet, and the women are clean but inelegant stylists. Exuberance and sweetness carry the day.