The Nutcracker – LAC Theater Lugano

We imagined a visual device capable of exploding the stage space: frames suspended in darkness that become windows onto possible worlds, galleries that multiply, architectures that breathe with the bodies on stage. This is not about projecting images behind the dancers, but building a theatre within the theatre, where every surface becomes a portal.

The performance begins in a kitchen, a place that’s not opulent but rich with life and activity – cooks moving among ladles and pans, a world of everyday gestures that already contains theatre within itself. Then the Christmas party explodes into a showcase of golden baroque halls. The frames light up like windows of a nineteenth-century palace, multiplying perspectives and viewpoints. It’s a world of warm light, of sumptuous architectures that seem to contain infinite rooms, infinite possibilities. The dancers move within this living gallery while Drosselmeier governs the scene like a magician of images.

Clara falls asleep and the nightmare phase begins: the space transforms into a dreamlike environment resembling a theatre, all lit in red – the color of battle, of nightmare, of danger. During the clash between the mice and the cooks, the baroque architectures are tinged with this blood-red light, witnesses to a dream that has yet to find its way out. But when the battle is won, purification arrives: a forest of conifers submerged in snow. Snow-covered trees fill the frames while flakes fall through the air, slow and hypnotic. It’s a landscape of pure magic, a suspended world where everything is silent and everything shines. The snow erases the nightmare and opens the door to wonder.

The second act is born from an empty, semi-dark, almost menacing hall. Dark, towering windows surround a space that seems to deny all magic. And it’s precisely from this dark nothingness that fantasy explodes. The oriental architectures of the Arabian dance emerge with their golden arches and precious decorations – here among the chipped frames we also scattered the colors of Palestine, a political detail that becomes poetic. For the Chinese dance, the space transforms into a landscape of misty mountains and solitary pines, a rarefied atmosphere from silk painting. Russian matryoshkas invade the backdrop like a playful army. Each dance generates its own world, and each world is born from the protagonist couple as an act of pure imagination.

In the waltz of the flowers, the stage fills with autumn trees, golden and reddish canopies that create a vegetal vault above the white dancers. The turquoise sky filters through the branches while the ensemble draws choreographies that seem to respond to the movement of the foliage. And finally, the return to the baroque palaces for the final apotheosis, but this time with a different awareness – Clara fell asleep as a child and awakened as a woman, the dream has been the territory of her transformation.

The video projection system is structured on three main surfaces: the large central frame and two side frames that function as spatial multipliers. We worked with projection mapping to adapt each image to the irregular geometry of the surfaces, allowing fluid transitions synchronized with the live music. Real-time control enabled us to manage chromatic variations and responsive animations. The visual palette ranges from the warm gold of baroque palaces to the red of nightmare, from the crystalline white of snow to the lunar blues of dreamlike scenes, from rarefied oriental atmospheres to the explosion of color in the national dances.