Taking a pause de deux
The critics called it kids’ stuff in 1892. Now, it’s essential programming for national companies
Dancer Hannah Fischer relaxes during a break in rehearsals for
The Nutcracker, a perennial holiday favourite from the National Ballet of Canada. This year’s run opens Saturday at the Four Seasons Centre.
For many audiences, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet is as much a holiday tradition as mistletoe, turkey and maxed-out credit cards.
But how did a work about a nutcracker doll — considered a flop at its premiere in Russia almost 125 years ago — end up being the world’s most popular ballet?
Here are eight things you didn’t even know you needed to know about the timeless family favourite. Why The Nutcracker? Long before there was a ballet, decorative nut-cracking devices, often figurines with mechanical jaws, had become popular. This was particularly the case in Germanic communities where, in folklore, nuts are associated with good luck. Why during the holiday season? Well, nuts mostly ripen in autumn and store well, so it makes sense that they’d be considered a seasonal treat. Not exactly an instant hit In 1890, when Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the big cheese at the Imperial Theatre in Saint Petersburg, commissioned ballet master Marius Petipa and Pyotr Tchaikovsky to make a work based on The Nutcracker story, the composer had deep misgivings. So did the critics when the ballet had its premiere two years later. It was dismissed as kids’ stuff.
“Ballet is sliding downhill, having lost its footing, and is moving toward some kind of fragile and sugary Nutcracker,” said the Petersburgskaya Gazeta on Dec. 10, 1892.
Although the composer was not happy with his music, it was Tchaikovsky’s score that endured.
The Nutcracker ballet didn’t gain traction until Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet production in 1954. By the 1960s The Nutcracker’s place as a holiday entertainment was firmly entrenched.
A dark tale sanitized for family consumption The ballet derives from Nussknacker und Mausekonig, an early 19th-century story by multi-talented German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, known for his gothic imagination and taste for horror. Petipa and Tchaikovsky worked from an adaptation of the story by Frenchman Alexandre Dumas of Three Musketeers fame. The complex plot with an elaborate flashback story, ripe with disturbing psychological undertones, needed simplifying for ballet and the result was a toothless confection.
Sliced and diced Little of the original 1892 choreography has survived and, over the years, choreographers have felt blissfully free to take generous liberties with The Nutcracker. James Kudelka’s spectacular version for the National Ballet of Canada, now in its 22nd season, is set in Tsarist Russia rather than Germany. It features a central character, Peter, who is as much the dramatic focus as the traditional sibling juvenile leads. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s starts with a game of street hockey, and Ballet Jorgen’s is set in Northern Ontario and visually inspired by Group of Seven paintings, giving The Nutcracker a distinctly Canadian spin.
Did Niagara Falls spill into The Nutcracker? Tchaikovsky had already started composing what became his best known music when he conducted the May 1891 opening of New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Following his triumph, Tchaikovsky took the train to see Niagara Falls, crossing into Canada to get the best view. He wrote in his diary: “The beauty and majesty of the spectacle is indeed remarkable. On the Canadian side I decided that I must not allow myself to be afraid, with the changing into very ugly clothes, the descent by lift under the waterfall, walking through a tunnel and, finally, standing under the very falls themselves, which was very interesting, if slightly awful.” It’s quite possible that the thunderous impression the Falls had on Tchaikovsky seeped into the score.
Why does the Sugar Plum Fairy twinkle? During a stopover in Paris en route to New York, Tchaikovsky discovered a recently invented keyboard percussion instrument then unknown in Russia called the celeste, with a sound reminiscent of a glockenspiel, only sweeter. Tchaikovsky had a celeste brought home and kept his discovery a secret until it became famous as the twinkling sound in the music for the Sugar Plum Fairy’s dance.
The Nutcracker is many ballet companies’ lifeblood The Nutcracker has become a cash cow for many ballet companies across North America. It can account for more than 50 per cent of total annual income. Even the National Ballet of Canada, with a broad and diverse repertoire, aims to gross around $3.5 million in Nutcracker sales, approaching a third of its total annual ticket revenue.
The Curse of Clara For decades it was part of National Ballet lore that if you were cast as a child to dance the role of Clara — Marie in Kudelka’s version — you could forget becoming the Sugar Plum Fairy as an adult. National Ballet School graduate Elena Lobsanova exploded that superstition in 2011.
“I guess I’ve cracked the egg,” quipped Lobsanova at the time, referencing the huge Fabergé-style egg from which her character emerges.
The National Ballet of Canada’s production of The Nutcracker is at The Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., Saturday to Dec. 31; national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595 or 1-866-345-9595.