Ballet Review: A Richard Strauss Pastry Extravaganza Delights at ABT

Whipped Cream (Schlagobers)

Music by Richard Strauss

Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky

American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan

July 6, 2018

Who knew that Richard Strauss, he of the long, philosophically-wrought operas and tone poems like Also Sprach Zarathustra and Die Frau ohne Schatten, also wrote fun ballet scores? Not me. So imagine my delight to see and hear the delightful Whipped Cream, one of the latest of choreographer Alexei Ratmansky’s American Ballet Theater archival revivals. The original premiered in Vienna in 1924, during a time of post-WWI hardship, so its extravagance caused it to be derided as “the billionaire’s ballet” and it quickly vanished from the scene only reappearing last year in Los Angeles with the new ABT production. I suspect Strauss had a noble intent, much like the escapist Ziegfield Follies musicals of the depression 1930s. He wrote, “I cannot bear the tragedy of the present time. I want to create joy.”  That he did! 

The slight plot is a Viennese The Nutcracker-- a mix of whimsy, peculiar humor, and romance. A boy gorges on too much whipped cream and falls ill. As he is removed from the pastry shop, the various ingredients (coffee, praline, whipped cream) come to life and dance. At the hospital, mean doctors and nurses try to inject him with drugs, but dancing alcoholic beverages tempt the medical practitioners who, impaired, fall into a stupor and allow the boy to escape from the hospital room into his pastry fantasies. Unlike The Nutcracker, the boy seems totally innocent and does not have subliminal sexual longings for the tempting female sweets parading by. The music sounds most like Strauss’ Viennese opera Der Rosenkavalier from 13 years earlier, but has its own character and delicacy. It liberally uses ethnic dance episodes (coffee, tea) rather like the Tchaikovsky ballet. The orchestration is colorful, and the ending sequence features a lovely melody for the strings soaring above the orchestra, typical of Strauss’ operas. It is a shame that an episode of dancing Jewish matzo balls parading with socialist flyers was cut back at the premiere, apparently criticized as anti-Semitic (Really? Anti-Semitism criticized in 1920’s Vienna? Really?). That episode gives you a sense of the whimsy of Strauss’ concept.

The Ratmansky/ABT production was gloriously decadent, bright, and colorful. The stage filled with colorful human and superhuman pastry concoctions, rather like those Carmen Miranda dancing banana spectaculars of the 1940s. 

The grownups had huge, scary heads, and the dancing nurses had enormous scary syringes. 

Ratmansky’s choreography was a mix of classical steps, parody, and a bit of Viennese waltz, just right for the score. There was a nice mix of distinctive solos and equally distinctive corps dances. I particularly loved the entrance of the dancing whipped cream corps de ballet, dressed in fleecy white.  Their one-at-a-time entry down an upstage slide was a witty evocation of both the famed Kingdom of the Shades entrance in La Bayadère and a 1930s Busby Berkeley water ballet. 

The analogy to La Bayadère is apt, as much of Whipped Cream seems to exist in an either sugar- or drug-induced hallucinatory state of the young boy, much like the opium-induced Shades entrance dreamed by Solor. The dancing was excellent, especially The Boy of Jeffrey Cirio: virtuosic, spinning, and leaping around the stage, and appropriately juvenile in mannerisms. Much of the restless young audience seemed to be there to see new ballerina-of-color heroine Misty Copeland, who made the usual medium-grade impression on me, without having very much special to say in her role as Princess Praline. Both ABT and Ratmansky should be thanked for this and Harlequinade, both which left me with big smiles and appreciation for a fusion of movement and music that is dance at its best. Another plus: this is a huge attendance boost for ABT, rather like a summertime Nutcracker to draw families. Its always nice to create a box office bonanza in these days of declining arts attendance.