Clara’s ballet dream begins as it always does — with the Rat King.
The Rat King, known also as the Mouse King, transforms with each ballet performance from a seven-headed rodent on two legs to a robed were-rat who wields a sword. His mission is always the same: to continue his monstrous rule of the magic kingdom, the one he’s been ruling since he disposed of the prince with a curse.
He has been appearing as part of the Festival Ballet of North Central Texas’ performance for 36 years now and in various iterations on the stage since composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov first staged The Nutcracker ballet in 1892.
The Festival Ballet of North Central Texas will be showcasing the magic of The Nutcracker Dec. 8-10 on stage at the Radio, TV, Film & Performing Arts Building at the University of North Texas.
Special guest principal dancers are Nikola Hadjitanev and Marta Petkova, both international ballet stars from the Sofia Opera and Ballet in Bulgaria. They will be dancing in the roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy/Snow Queen and the fairy’s Cavalier/Snow King. They last danced together locally as part of the Festival Ballet’s Nutcracker performance in 2019.
Performances are at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8, followed by 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, and noon and 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10.
Since 1988, the Festival Ballet company’s performance has garnered awards, including Best Nutcracker, Best Costumes and Best Battle Scene in 1998 from the Dallas Dance Council.
“I believe that because of this vision of this story told through the ballet art, this story is still alive [after 200 years],” said Eldar Valiev, a veteran professional ballet dancer and ballet master at the Denton Ballet Academy. “The story is kind of different, like some world of mystery, of dreaming, of making some interesting transformations.”
Ashley Odom, Valiev’s rehearsal assistant and production stage manager for The Nutcracker, explained that there’s always an element of magic whenever a ballet production happens, in part due to the costumes and elaborate sets.
“You bring together a story that is classic like that, that’s also very whimsical and you add in Christmas to it, I think it’s just a production that ends up being timeless,” Odom said.
The original tradition
The original 1892 Nutcracker ballet was based on an 1844 story by Alexander Dumas, which was, in turn, based on a 1816 gothic fairy tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” by E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Hoffman’s story ends with the protagonist, Marie (also known as Clara in more modern versions), trapped as a queen in the magic doll kingdom with her godfather Drosselmeyer’s nephew. The nephew had been cursed to transform into the Nutcracker for stepping on the Mouse Queen’s tail after he saved a beautiful princess from a similar curse, only to be spurned by her himself.
Marie accepts him despite his toylike features.
In 1988, Denton Ballet Academy founder Hugh Nini created the ballet company Festival Ballet of North Central Texas to present his vision of The Nutcracker to North Texans.
Nini had taken liberties with the story similar to Tchaikovsky, Petipa and Ivanov in the late 1800s and other ballet directors who have adapted the original ballet since then.
It took Nini eight years to craft it.
Nini said his additions to the Nutcracker story were done to strengthen the story, from Uncle Drosselmeyer appearing more often in the production like in Hoffman’s original telling to Drosselmeyer’s mechanical dolls reappearing outside of the opening party scene.
The magical doll kingdom, for example, became the land of snow that now leads to a magical garden.
Nini’s adaptation of the ballet has become the longest-running Nutcracker production in North Texas and features dancers from 30 communities in North Texas as well as dancers from other parts of the country and the world.
“Mr. Nini’s passion was ballet, and he’s really passionate,” Valiev said. “He’s really paying attention to the details, as I am.”
Continuing the tradition
Valiev began helping with Nini’s Nutcracker production in August 2011 when he became co-artistic director of the Festival Ballet company and director of the Denton Ballet Academy.
He was 10 years old when he was first introduced to ballet. He was a good soccer player, practicing all the time, and his next-door neighbor was a ballerina who would sometimes stop to watch him practice. She suggested that he try out for the ballet because he was jumping good.
“‘You are actually jumping with a pointed tip,’” Valiev recalled her saying. “She noticed that and said, ‘I’d think you would be good for ballet. Would you like to go to St. Petersburg?’”
The famous Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, was where the original Nutcracker ballet was performed. When Valiev was a child, the academy was taking only five students out of about 500 boys and five students from the 500 girls who were auditioning then.
Valiev was one of those boys.
“That is where my journey started,” Valiev said. “It is much harder than soccer, but I realized that I had a passion for it.”
He’d go on to graduate, receive additional training at the Kirov Ballet Company and appear as principal ballet dancer in numerous ballet companies, performing leading parts in productions such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle and Don Quixote.
He’d also met his wife, Lilia Valieva, at the ballet school. Both would become renowned ballet dancers who appeared in performances around the world, including the Icelandic National Ballet. They also become parents to a son, who is older now and lives in North Texas.
In the late ’90s, Valiev and Valieva moved to the United States and spent 13 years at the Cumberland County Playhouse in Tennessee, where Valiev served as ballet master and the director of the dance program.
They wanted to do something more and something new for their lives, Valiev said. They began searching for their own company and met Nini, who was preparing to retire after 30 years and wanting someone to take over the Denton Ballet Academy.
Valiev said they fell in love with Nini’s Nutcracker production and the Denton Ballet Academy. “This is it,” Valiev recalled himself and his wife saying. “This is what we’ve really been looking for.”
“We just realized that it was one of the best attractions we’d seen,” he continued. “It’s an honor and privilege to work with choreography like that.”
Sadly, Lilia Valieva would only be able to instruct for three years at Denton Ballet Academy. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and didn’t reveal it to the students until shortly before her death in late 2014.
Reece Domingue, a former student of Valieva’s who has spent 15 years at the Denton Ballet Academy, called Valieva the most beautiful, kind and elegant and caring teacher.
“She was there and still teaching and very ill at the time, and being a kid, I knew something was wrong,” Domingue said.
Valieva would live to see the 2014 performance of The Nutcracker. She died shortly before the new year.
Shortly after she passed, Eldar Valiev could have taken a break to mourn his wife’s passing, but he continued teaching at the academy. Domingue dedicated her dance recital that year to Valieva as well as her performance in The Nutcracker.
During the 30th anniversary in 2017, Domingue danced the part of Clara. This year, she will be dancing as the lead Spanish dancer and also as an icicle and petal.
“I want to make her proud — and almost like a responsibility — want to help fulfill her mission,” said Dominque, who is now a ballet instructor.
“That is what carries me on. In every single performance and show, I wear a breast cancer pin in every single costume in memory and to keep her in my memory.”