By Clémence Michallon (The Independent, United Kingdom)
It’s Christmas Eve. A girl is given a wooden nutcracker. She falls asleep; suddenly, she’s transported into another world, where toys are as tall as humans, mice rebel against their king, and flowers are free to waltz. Every December, the story gets told anew: At dance companies around the world, Nutcracker season whirls in.
The Nutcracker is one of the most popular ballets in the world. It’s at the Royal Opera House in London, at the Joffrey in Chicago, at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. It’s at an untold number of smaller companies around the US and abroad. In New York City, more than 100,000 people each year attend New York City Ballet’s famed production of The Nutcracker, staged and choreographed by George Balanchine.
Some love The Nutcracker. Others are sick of it. Regardless, it endures. At City Ballet, it has been an annual event since 1954. Only Covid wiped it from the calendar in 2020 and partly in 2021.
“The Nutcracker is absolutely accessible to everybody,” Pulitzer winning dance critic Sarah Kaufman tells The Independent. “It’s family entertainment. But I think the number one reason why its popularity is so enduring is the music.”
You might love Balanchine’s Nutcracker, or you might prefer Peter Wright’s version at the Royal Opera House, or Alexei Ratmansky’s at American Ballet Theatre. Whichever you choose, you will hear Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s score.
“It’s exquisite,” Kaufman says, pointing to the part, toward the end of the ballet, when the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier dance a pas de deux. “It’s so full of emotion and longing and love and romance and everything that we’ve gone through as the audience in this ballet,” she says. “There are so many beautiful pieces of music, and tunes that will delight a child and are complex enough to interest adults.”
For Meg Howrey, a former dancer and author of the novel They’re Going To Love You, set in the dance world, The Nutcracker “was the perfect post-war ballet to introduce to American audiences: light, lavish, charming, with no dark or psychological undertones.”
“When Tchaikovsky wrote the music, he was in hit-making form, like a 19th-century Timbaland,” she says. “The attachment may have something to do with nostalgia. For innocence, for a break from cynicism or anxiety.”
“When Tchaikovsky wrote the music, he was in hit-making form, like a 19th-century Timbaland,” she says. “The attachment may have something to do with nostalgia. For innocence, for a break from cynicism or anxiety.”
Balanchine’s production, first staged at New York City Ballet, played an instrumental part in the ballet’s popular success, and in elevating it to the rank of holiday staple. “[You have] one of the great choreographers – certainly the most influential choreographer of the 20th century – creating a full-length ballet, which was unusual for Balanchine, to one of the most beautiful scores in ballet music. You’re going to have something exquisite,” Kaufman says.
In a February 1964 review, dance critic Walter Terry, writing for the New York Herald Tribune, was clearly enthralled, highlighting the “magic” of the evening and Balanchine’s “choreographic genius”. The ballet, he wrote, was “a real spectacle, rich in excitement, impeccable in taste, and by all indications of audience response, a roaring hit”.
The Nutcracker’s popularity is a lifeline for many dance companies. At City Ballet, The Nutcracker’s six-week run accounts for 45 per cent of the company’s annual ticket sales—a number that is not unique to City Ballet, Kaufman says.
“Most ballet companies can’t exist without it,” she says. “It funds the rest of the year. [On top of ticket sales], there are the gift shops in the lobby selling Nutcracker cookie cutters and tree ornaments and all that kind of thing. It’s absolutely critical to the bottom line.”
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