DANCE / CHRIS PASLES : ‘Nutcracker’ a la Russia : The Moscow Classical Ballet Production, in Cerritos, Offers New Characters and Extra Dancing

A dancing Drosselmeyer? A Queen of the Mice? A sister for Clara?

These aren’t your typical “Nutcracker” ballet characters. Drosselmeyer usually is an older, mysterious godfather who doesn’t dance a step. The leader of the mice is always a king. Clara has no sister . . .

But you can expect to see all these new characters in the Moscow Classical Ballet production of “Nutcracker,” which continues through Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

“Practically all the first act is different from all American productions,” said company co-artistic director Natalia Kasatkina. She was speaking through an interpreter in a recent phone interview from San Antonio, where the company danced before coming to Cerritos.

“We tried to follow the story of the (E.T.A. Hoffmann) fairy-tale on which the libretto of ‘Nutcracker’ is based. In the fairy-tale, there is a Queen of the Mice, who has a son. He has seven heads. He proposes to Masha (as Clara is known in the Russian version). But she rejects him, and the Nutcracker Prince kills him.

“The Queen wants to have her revenge. So she follows Masha and the Prince into the second act. Tchaikovsky has specific music for that.”

Well, yes, he does. But that original scenario calls for that music to support the Nutcracker Prince miming his earlier battle with the mice to explain to the Sugar Plum Fairy and her court how he and Clara got there.

Here, however, this “second battle will be with the Queen of the Mice,” Kasatkina said decisively.

“Masha’s sister, Louisa,” she continued, “has a big role here because in the first act she wears a bridal dress. This is important for Masha because she sees herself later as a bride. We tried in the first act to put in everything that will appear in Masha’s dream in the second.”

As for the extra dancing, “there are very many talented dancers in the company,” Kasatkina said, “so there are more leading roles than in usual productions. Masha’s brother dances a lot, and Drosselmeyer dances a lot, too.”

Kasatkina and her co-artistic director Vladimir Vasiliov disavow any psychological overtones to their version. But they do see the ballet as the process of “a little girl growing up to be an adult. That’s part of the Russian tradition.

“Masha grows up, but not only in her dream. In the final scene--here as well as in the fairy-tale--Drosselmeyer introduces her to his nephew, who looks like the prince of her dreams. There is a symbolic meaning at the very last scene. Her little brother, Fritz, comes in with a doll and tries to get Masha to play with it. But she won’t.”

The production is being touted in the Cerritos Center’s press materials as “the only authentic Russian ‘Nutcracker’ being offered this holiday season.”

Kasatkina defended the claim. “The ballet was created in Russia and composed by a Russian composer, and it’s based on Russian traditions,” she said.

The choreography for the production is based on the 1934 Soviet version by Vasily Vainonen, which both Kasatkina and Vasiliov danced in as kids.

The company was founded in 1966 as the USSR State Choreographic Company, and its primary mission was to tour the Soviet Union and other countries. Igor Moiseyev, its first artistic director, went on to found the internationally famous Moiseyev Dance Company, a folk dance troupe.

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Kasatkina and Vasiliov, who had both danced in the Bolshoi Ballet, took over as artistic directors in 1977. The company acquired its current name in 1986 and toured the United States, including the Southland, in 1988.

For financial reasons, the company will use recorded tapes for accompaniment. “We are very sorry we don’t have our orchestra,” Kasatkina said.

“We have very young dancers as the principals,” she added. “We came with a young part of our company because the (American) audience liked the younger dancers during the 1988 tour.”

The company touring the United States has only 44 members, less than half of its size at home. (The other half is opening a run in Nice, France, on Thursday with “Cinderella.”) But one corps member left the company while it was in Texas.

“We are glad for her,” a clearly upset Kasatkina said. “She has relatives here. But we don’t understand why she did it. Nowadays, Russia is quite different than what it was. Everybody is free to go anywhere in the world and live there.

“But we are worried about her. . . . She broke the contract she had with us until 1995. We now have an international contract, which is registered abroad, and now she’s like a fugitive. . . . We worry about her. We don’t know what will happen to her.”

* The Moscow Classical Ballet will dance the “Nutcracker” today and Thursday at 8 p.m.; Friday at 4 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. $25-$33, adults; $12, children. (800) 300-4345.