The Bang Group's Presents NUT/CRACKED At The Flea

THE BANG GROUP'S delightfully offbeat Nut/Cracked returns for its 16th Anniversary Season with an ensemble of 21 dancers spreading holiday cheer. David Parker's comic, neo-vaudeville version of "The Nutcracker" will return for three performances, December 20-22, at The Flea in downtown Manhattan. Special guests for the season are students from The Dalton School, Frank Sinatra high School for the Performing Arts, and e.g. dance.

Parker's witty choreography is totally unpredictable as he whisks together an array of dance forms inspired by competition, intoxication, greed, Chinese take-out, bubble-wrap, toe shoes, and the perils of ice.

Musically, the choreographer also takes a playful and wide-ranging approach through many incantations of the beloved Tchaikovsky score, including renderings by Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, as well as the traditional orchestral suite.

The brainchild of Italian presenter Gianni Bruno and Parker, the show grew out of the choreographer's notorious male duet for classical thumb suckers, set to the Grand Pas de Deux from "The Nutcracker," which toured widely in Europe garnering prizes and great popularity. Bruno proposed that Parker create a version of the whole Nutcracker in the same anarchic, polyglot style.

The work premiered in Genoa, Italy in 2003 and shortly thereafter at New York's Dance Theater Workshop (now NYLA). Its immediate success brought the show back for another season, and now it has deservedly become the downtown dance world's most ubiquitous holiday show.
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