Nutcracker-Sleeping Beauty mash-up in mall show
Project Ballet Futures scholars (from left) Stanley Alamer, Juan Angelo De Leon and Germaine Dawal as the little drummer boys. Photo by Sylvia Lichauco
In an early holiday treat, Ballet Manila performed excerpts from the Christmas favorite, The Nutcracker, and from Lisa Macuja-Elizalde’s Sleeping Beauty in a free show at S Maison in Conrad Hotel last November 23.
Ballet Manila artistic director Lisa Macuja-Elizalde and co-artistic director Osias Barroso (seated, with principal dancers Romeo Peralta and Jasmine Pia Dames) with the team that performed at S Maison. Photo courtesy of S Maison
The show was perfectly set in the mall’s Atrium decorated with a Christmas tree a-glitter with gold and silver balls of varying sizes. It was in the same venue that Ballet Manila had mounted a press preview for its 24th season, On Pointe, last July.
Integrated into The Nutcracker excerpt was a new Christmas ballet suite choreographed by Ballet Manila rehearsal master Jonathan Janolo and titled Gifts of Harmony. It featured three pairs of principal dancers: Joan Emery Sia and Elpidio Magat (representing Magic, set to Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy), Abigail Oliveiro and Mark Sumaylo (representing Joy, to the tune of Carol of the Bells) and Jasmine Pia Dames and Romeo Peralta (representing Love, to the tune of Gloria in Excelsis Deo).
Project Ballet Futures scholars Juan Angelo De Leon, Germaine Dawal and Stanley Alamer danced as the little drummer boys in a piece created by Ballet Manila co-artistic director Osias Barroso. The three boys were also cast as young princes in the Sleeping Beauty excerpt, in a scene celebrating the birth of Princess Aurora.
Serving as a teaser to the world premiere of Sleeping Beauty in January, excerpts included the opening scene of Aurora’s 16th birthday with an array of fairies representing different attributes, and the Rose Adagio with King Stefan, the Lilac Fairy, Aurora and her princess friends Cinderella and Snow White and their respective princes.
Christmas belles (from left) Shaira Comeros, Jessica Pearl Dames, Kotomi Narai, Joan Emery Sia, Nanami Hasegawa, Nicole Barroso and Jessa Balote in front of S Maison’s sparkling tree. Photo courtesy of Nicole Barroso
