The Nutcracker and the Cuddly Mouse

• Libretto author: Petr Zuska, inspired by E. T. A.Hoffmann
• Choreography and stage direction: Petr Zuska
• Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Sets: Pavel Svoboda
• Costumes: Alexandra Grusková
• Light design: Daniel Tesař
• Animation: Šimon Koudela, Karel Mařík
• Duration: 90 min.
• Number of dancers: 30 and 10 kids
• World premiere: 3. 12. 2015 - Czech National Ballet

In his production, the choreographer and stage director Petr Zuska conceived the Nutcracker theme in an original and singular way. Notwithstanding his significant authorial input, Tchaikovsky’s music is treated with the utmost respect, with the score and its structure retained. Zuska refers to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which evinces itself in the jocose transposition in the title of his production, but, as he himself puts it, particularly “ in the certain logic of the story itself, which is absent in the majority of its ballet adaptations”. In his version, Zuska hyperbolically turns round the symbols of Good and Evil, altering their established representation. He unfurls a story replete with humour, poetics, images and spells. The magic of winter, Advent and Christmas, the eeriness of old Prague, the Czech and Central European seasonal traditions and, naturally, the unbridled freedom of the child’s imagination and dreams.

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Foto: Martin Divíšek, Pavel Hejný