Danielle Leahy 11jfo

GCSE Dance

The Hard Nut

The Hard Nut Is Based On The Nutcracker and Mouse King by ETA Hoffmann, the dance company they used was the Mark Morris Company and the music is by Tchaikovsky. The director of the Hard Nut has not been original, as he has used the same music from the original Nutcracker. The video is a live recording.

Act 1

The opening scene starts with three people on the stage dressed as young children, they have their backs to the audience and are dressed in a black and white style, and the curtains are drawn.

The curtains go up and Act One Begins. The scenery is black and white there is also a big door bigger than the characters on the stage. The three main characters on the stage are children we can tell this by the way they are acting and the facial expressions they pull. The director is dealing with gender issues a lot of the women are played by men. The dance style they are using is ballet.

The huge door opens and the set changes to a living room style setting. It is around Christmas we can tell this, as there is a Christmas tree in the corner of the stage. The characters are dressed in green and red which are the colours of Christmas. In the days were the musical is set they did not have coloured televisions the television starts to go colour and the music starts to be multipurpose as if there is a fire. Throughout the play the use of humour is quite big. The three children are now obviously in their Christmas suits the oldest girl showing off all dressed up whilst the other is quiet and dressed in pink different from the rest, she is overlooked by people very sensible and very shy.

Everybody on the stage pairs up and are dancing in duets apart from the youngest child who is in the pink, she is being ignored but is trying hard to involve herself. The girl then notices a man coming into the house she makes a fuss and everybody notices and acts surprised. The man appears to be a joker always wants to be the centre of attention and loves the quiet girl. He brings in two life size presents and the young girl and boy open them, two giant toys come out and begin a duet but they are using the people around them to do the duet including the children. They are using sharp isolated movements acting like robots, using different motifs.

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The family then get back into partners and begin the duets again but this time doing the waltz. (1 2 step). The lively man who jokes about all the time brings out a puppet the children start to feed it nuts which made me realise it was the Hard Nut character which made me realise so must be the man. The puppet breaks and the children get upset and start fighting between themselves. The young girl runs off and tries fixing it she does eventually fix it and now owns the puppet. This makes her feel really special as she ...

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