Nutcracker
let from the 19th century, The Nutcracker isn’t about falling in love. So if you see the heroine Clara dancing a romantic pas de deux with the Nutcracker prince, you’re watching an alternative version, an unnecessary cliché.
2. Paths That Must Not Cross. Drosselmeyer should be seen only in Act I, the Sugarplum only in Act II. Part of the story’s mystery is that they never meet. Only the two lead children – the heroine and the Nutcracker Prince – meet both.
3. The Overture: Just Listen. If you see any character during the overture, you’re watching a modern version. Tchaikovsky’s overture – with instruments playing high, fast and bouncy – is on the miniature scale of childhood itself, with passages of rhythmic syncopation that embody the excitement of a child’s eager anticipation. Many productions, mistrusting an audience’s ability to cope without spectacle, try to distract from the music by starting to tell the story.
4. Child’s Play. Clara – sometimes called Marie, as in Hoffmann’s original story and in George Balanchine’s version – should be played by a little girl; Drosselmeyer’s nephew (who later becomes the Nutcracker and then little prince) by a little boy. Their only dancing occurs at the opening Christmas party. (It’s not unusual, however, to see adult principal dancers in these roles.)
5. Who’s on Point? Clara never dances on point, but the story brings her a series of increasingly marvelous women who do – clockwork toys at the Nutcracker
party, the dancing Snowflakes, the Sweets and, above all, the Sugarplum, the dancing prima.
6. Don’t Mess With the Score. Tchaikovsky’s musical composition has such integrity and variety that it should never be revised. And yet, and yet . . . I know only two productions that play all of Tchaikovsky’s score in the right order – Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut and Alexei Ratmansky’s American Ballet Theater production, both of which count as alternative versions, changing the story more than most.
7. Act I’s Ballerina? The Christmas tree must grow huge. As Balanchine said when fighting for money for his production’s tree in 1954, the tree is the ballerina of Act I. Some productions can’t afford an upwardly mobile tree; and some take the opportunity to turn the show into a psychodrama here.
8. Transformation (No Dancing, Please). This is the most controversial of all. After the tree grows and after the battle between the toy soldiers and mice comes phenomenal music that should never be danced. True, Tchaikovsky gave it a strong dancelike rapture – but, like the overture, he meant it to stay undanced. This is transformation music in which the whole stage changes and we see the unknown territory through which the children will pass. Where there was one huge Christmas tree, now we see a whole snowclad forest. The
I know only one production that has the courage to leave this undanced: Balanchine’s. Many introduce a pas de deux here for the Snow Queen and her King – an anachronistic tradition that began around 1940. (Better that than the equally widespread romantic pas de deux for Clara and her Nutcracker. See No1.)
9. Keep the Pantomime Dame. Act II has to include Mother Ginger (or Mère Gigogne). She’s a larger-than-life fertility figure, a pantomime dame (drag character) whose crinoline hides multiple children – they dance their way out from under it and then back in. Audiences adore her, but for some reason European productions omit her. She’s