My first nutcracker

For over 130 years,The Nutcracker has been one of the most popular ballet classics by the congenial duo Piotr I. Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa, based on fairy tales by E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas the Elder, and is still performed worldwide in various productions and interpretations.

Eno Peci, solo dancer with the Vienna State Ballet since 2003, has turned to choreography at home and abroad since 2009. Among other things, he created the interludes with members of the Vienna State Ballet and the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy for the opening of the Vienna Opera Ball in 2018 and 2020, Petrushka at the Vienna Volksoper and choreographies with the youth company for the Vienna Philharmonic's Summer Night Concert and the Austrian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Spielberg.

With Mein erster Nussknacker (My First Nutcracker ), he now presents his own take on this historic work and, together with students from the Ballet Academy and the Vienna State Opera's Youth Company, creates a one-hour version in which suspense and humor are not neglected. With his very physical and sculptural dance vocabulary based on classical ballet, he playfully introduces young audiences aged six and over to the world of dance. The performance element is particularly important to Peci - himself a distinctive performer: "It will be a different take on the well-known material, but without breaking the narrative of the composition. I'm also trying to incorporate a lot of humor and all of this, of course, in my own contemporary style." He makes the characters very human, some of them almost slapstick-like, and does not judge them in terms of good and evil - all the characters and scenes are ultimately interconnected and integrated into the plot.

In keeping with the theme, the common thread is the nut in various shapes and sizes and, of course, a nutcracker that a girl called Klara magically receives. Peci takes the audience on an imaginative journey between dream and reality. Beginning in a chocolate nut store owned by the mysterious Drosselmeyer, followed by a colorful snowstorm, a group of children experience exciting adventures in which they even bravely win a fight against burglars! As a reward, the children receive nuts from different countries around the world, which are alluded to by musically rousing dances from the respective cultures - from Spain, Arabia, China and Russia - in keeping with the divertissement of the great ballet classics.

A highlight is the pas de deux of the "ice candy duet" - the name is based on the "kingdom of sweets" of the original version - the only dance of fantasy figures and performed by the lady in pointe shoes. A grand finale concludes the ballet to many well-known melodies from Tchaikovsky's masterful score, which is able to create such different moods - including the festive march and the "Snowflake Waltz" accompanied by harp sounds. Eno Peci shows that Tchaikovsky's classical music can be perfectly combined with contemporary dance vocabulary and brings the story of The Nutcracker to new life.