Goh Ballet's Nutcracker boasts ex-Bolshoi star Svetlana Lunkina

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      The Sugar Plum Fairy’s pas de deux with her Prince is one of ballet’s most iconic dances—the magical gift that comes right at the end of The Nutcracker, like grand icing on a particularly exquisite cake. Set to some of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s most achingly beautiful music, it’s technically challenging, but the flickering footwork, perfectly aligned arabesques, and spinning pirouettes have to look weightless and easy.

      In short, the fabled part demands a star. But rarely do we see one with quite the pedigree of former Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, as Vancouver will when she joins the Goh Ballet for The Nutcracker this year. It will mark the first time the world-class talent has performed here.

      The lithe, raven-haired Muscovite with the striking almond-shaped eyes joined the Bolshoi in 1997. At 18, she became the youngest Giselle in the legendary company’s history, going on to master all the leading classical roles, and many contemporary ones too.

      In 2012, she left Russia amid turmoil, controversy, and power struggles at the Bolshoi—but that’s another long story. By 2013, she had joined the National Ballet of Canada, where she won instant acclaim, including high praise for last year’s title role in American-German choreographer John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina.

      Along this dizzying journey, Lunkina has, of course, danced the Sugar Plum Fairy around the world, in multiple versions. She can’t count how many times. But the modest prima says she retains a heightened awareness of how high expectations are each time she performs the role.

      “I know it’s special in every country and every theatre for every production,” she says over the phone, speaking from the Four Seasons Centre during rehearsals at that Toronto venue, where she’s hitting the stage as The Nutcracker’s graceful Snow Queen for the National. “And to see it at New Year’s and Christmastime—it’s very special for every person. For someone who comes for the first time, it is also so special.

      “Because it’s a classical production it has to be very pure, very beautiful—and yet at the same time very strong, and you have to see the hard work,” she continues. “The hardest part is to hide the effort, just to make it look easy and pure with beautiful lines. Because it’s very difficult.”

      Goh Ballet's picturesque vision of The Nutcracker.

      If this prima ballerina is calling it hard, that says something about the role. Lunkina has, after all, trained with the best. She was mentored by ballet royalty: fabled Russian prima ballerina assoluta Ekaterina Maximova. Under the tutelage of that icon, Lunkina has made a name not only for her Bolshoi-grade technique but for a unique flexibility and floatiness that gives her work a famously ethereal quality that epitomizes romantic Russian ballet.

      Those are all attributes that should make for a spectacular Sugar Plum Fairy. Lunkina says Tchaikovsky’s music, from the rippling harp that introduces the work to its sweeping orchestral crescendos, is what helps power her through the part: “I feel the energy of it, no matter where I perform.”

      She is also propelled by the sense that the audience is following her, especially the children who come out in droves to The Nutcracker at this time of year. “You can almost feel them breathing with you on-stage, almost like they are doing every step with you,” she relates. “It’s really different from other productions in that way.”

      The Nutcracker is a tradition she, as a performer who has to work at Christmastime, has found her own way to celebrate with her children, now 10 and 15. She fondly remembers them watching her dance this role from backstage.

      For the show here, Lunkina joins another exciting international talent, Bavarian State Ballet’s Dmitrii Vyskubenko, as her Cavalier Prince.

      And though the Goh Ballet’s lushly staged rendition, created 11 years ago by Canadian-born ballerina-choreographer Anna-Marie Holmes, is full of family fun—an army of cheese-throwing mice, an outsized gingerbread man, and a towering tannenbaum—it’s safe to say there’s going to be some serious dance at the end. Like we said, icing—a rare, dazzling confection that should please even the most discerning tastes.

      The Goh Ballet presents The Nutcracker at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre from Friday to Sunday (December 20 to 22).

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