Nutcracker challenge keeps Kesi on her toes

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

It takes its toll but the audiences love it so much it makes it all worthwhile,” says ballet dancer Kesi Olley-Dorey of The Nutcracker, which will visit Galway’s Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 28 and 29

This production of a perennial Christmas favourite is from Ballet Ireland and will be performed by a cast of top-class dancers including Kesi.

Based on stories by Hoffmann and Alexander Dumas, and with wonderful music by Tchaikovsky, the action opens at a Christmas Eve party. As the clock strikes eight, a mysterious figure, Uncle Drosselmeyer, who is a gifted toymaker brings gifts for the children. His presents include four lifelike dolls and a wooden nutcracker carved in the shape of a little man.

When midnight strikes, strange things start to happen. The Christmas tree grows to extraordinary heights and the Nutcracker leads Clara and the other children into a fairy-tale world.  With her heroic Nutcracker at her side, Clara defeats the Mouse King and his army, and journeys with the Nutcracker – who has been transformed into a handsome prince – into the Land of Snow and the Kingdom of Sweets.

Fantasy, magnificent music, wonderful costumes and a happy ending make this a family favourite at this time of year, something that makes sense to Kesi.

“It is magical,” she says simply. “People come and want to escape normal life and this is a magical story that gets you in the mood for Christmas. It’s humorous and dark and has the Sugar Plum at the end. A lot of ballets are bleak and have dark motifs and Nutcracker is the opposite.”

Londoner Kesi who trained in the Tring School for the Performing Arts, a specialist boarding school housed in a former Rothschild mansion in Herefordshire, previously danced with English National Ballet, appearing in productions including Sleeping Beauty as well as The Nutcracker. With Ballet Theatre UK, she has performed in Snow Queen and Sleeping Beauty.

She was a relative late-comer to ballet but that hasn’t held her back.

“I started as a child, but didn’t like it,” she explains. As a toddler, Kesi had gone to a class with a friend who was learning ballet because she wanted to be like her mate. But she hated it. So, she sulked for the class and refused to return. Then, aged 12, she gave it another go after seeing a ballet at the Opera House in London and went professional after she’d finished training.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.