Call him Trauma Flintstone on stage, call him Joe Collins at the piano, but this weekend, his Sioux name has gotta be "Dances with rats." When the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band fires up its Dance-Along Nutcracker this Saturday and Sunday, Trauma Flintstone plays RataVinci, the lead rat beneath Clara's Christmas tree, who recasts the Nutcracker story from the rats' perspective. The story is told in the spirit of Shrek or Wicked, where as far as the rats are concerned, the ballet is a total human-centric whitewash.
The Dance-Along Nutcracker is the Freedom Band's annual holiday wingding and fundraising bash. Concocted in 1985 in the spirit of the Sing-It-Yourself Messiah, the Dance-Along Nutcracker has re-spun the music of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and pulled the audience out of its chairs and into the spotlights almost every year for 22 years. As with any self-respecting San Francisco wacko original, costumes and tutus are de rigueur (though not a strict requirement), and there's a tutu and fairy-wand boutique if you've got nothing to wear or are in the mood for a new tiara. If you need a cocktail or some holiday nosh to loosen your twinkle toes, the gala on Saturday night includes bar service and a holiday reception with special entertainment by City Swing with Joyce Grant.
Only the Suite portion of Tchaikovsky's ballet (the collection of fantasy-land dances performed for Clara and the Nutcracker prince in the second act) has been arranged for wind ensemble. (And for those of you who are Tchaikovsky fans, the Band just added the flamenco trumpet feature, Spanish Chocolate, to its dance card last year.) So each year, the conductor — the Freedom Band's new artistic director, Dr. Roberto-Juan Gonz‡lez — fills out the show with complementary music, and brings in guest artists to perform between dance-along numbers, giving the audience a chance to catch its breath and see a little spectacle in-between.
That's, of course, where Trauma and the cast of characters and dancers come in. This will be Trauma's fourth appearance at the Dance-Along since he first made a splash with Tom Lehrer's "Hanukah in Santa Monica" in 1999 in blue-sequined gown, but this will be his largest role in the show by a long shot. As the lead rat who presents the rodent point of view, the entire show revolves around his character this year.
"I can't think of anybody else in town who could make this role work so well," said Gonzalez during a phone interview. "He actually has to be a narrator and an actor, and he carries all the vocals. He's a phenomenal singer, a great character actor, a phenomenal comedian, and that's exactly what the show needs."
Forever Jingle
Choreographer Carolyn Carvajal is another key piece to the Dance-Along crazy quilt. Carvajal first danced in the Dance-Along cast with the Dance Through Time troupe in 1997, and she's come back to choreograph and dance in almost every show since that year. A 29-year veteran of the San Francisco Opera Ballet, a former Joffrey Ballet apprentice and a longtime instructor at schools including Shan Yee Poon Ballet, Carvajal has serious dance chops. Her sense of whimsy has invented some of the show's most hilarious acts, including the famous, silver-lamŽ Hershey's Kisses who rolled around on office chairs to Swan Lake, and the tap-dancing baton-twirlers who tapped to "Jingle Bells Forever." Her performances as the face and feet of the human puppet "Stumpy" (choreographed by Dudley Brooks) never fail to bring the house down. This year, she's organized the tribe of house rats and choreographed the cast action, and she dances in the scenes as the lead rat to whom Trauma gives voice.
"Carolyn's a major player in this show, because she is the person who organizes virtually all of the visual stuff that goes on," Gonzalez told me. "Some of the ballet elements this year happened simply because we were all sitting at her kitchen table, free-associating, and all of a sudden she lit up like a Christmas tree."
As the new kid on the block, this will be Gonzalez's first involvement with the Dance-Along, but he came to the show last year and got a big surprise. After finishing 38 years as a church musician, where his job compelled him to play Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" every 6 months for Christmas and Easter like it was forever and ever, he swore he'd never King of Kings again. So last Dance-Along, when he found himself doing cheerleader routines to the Ol' "Hallelujah," he was shocked to realize he loved it.
"I was howling at the amazing silliness of it all," he told me. "It gave me back a wonderful piece of music that I never thought I'd want anything to do with again. If there's anything to be said about the fact that there is art in what this show does, it's that it deconstructs and reconstructs the whole concept of the Nutcracker so you hear it fresh."
With tribes of organized rats and professionally trained ballet dancers, you may be wondering where the audience comes in. Actually, the audience dance numbers are full-on half the show, and after 22 years of performing Nutcracker music, it is the surprise of what they'll bring onto the dance floor that makes for some of the most memorable moments. Past stars unlisted in any program have included the flock of baby ballerinas who mirrored the Sugar Plum Fairy's pirouette en masse; the woman in Nutcracker drag who led the full audience in the march of the soldiers; the urban ballerina in high-tops who was hiked up onto friends' shoulders with fairy wands waving for a solo grand-finale entrance; the bearded ballet troupe in pink tulle, fuscia lipstick, and chrome-n-rhinestone tiaras performing lifts and dying swan imitations. The bigger the hams, the happier the crowd, and though you're not required to dance, and some people don't, we're told it's actually hard to resist.
Gonzalez said he witnessed one such moment last year. He sat behind an old, married, gay couple who stayed anchored to their seats with arms crossed through most of the show. Then, when the opening strains of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" chimed out for the penultimate Dance-Along number, one man held his hand out to his partner and said, "Well, they're playing our song, dear." And they twirled out onto the floor at last.
"The show is a happy mix of Broadway show and pit-show, and ballet and holiday concert," Gonzalez said. "It's just a whole bunch of things all running at each other at maximum speed, like a Christmas atomic-collider. And the unexpected result at the end, once the grand collision occurs, is a lot of smiles, and a lot of happy people."
Heidi Beeler plays trumpet in the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band. The Dance-Along Nutcracker runs Sat., Dec. 8, 2:30 & 7 p.m. (Holiday Gala with City Swing and Joyce Grant), and Sun., Dec. 9, 11 a.m. & 3 p.m., at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Info: www.sflgfb.org/dancealong.html or (415) 978-2787.