Dance company overhauls ‘The Nutcracker’ in anti-racism drive
A MAJOR production of The Nutcracker is to be overhauled to tone down its “outdated and racist” content.
Scottish Ballet said it was making “subtle but important” changes to costumes and choreography in a forthcoming run of the ballet, following concerns that how foreign cultures are portrayed could be deemed offensive by modern audiences. Changes will be made to Chinese and Arabian-inspired scenes in The Nutcracker’s Land of Sweets, the setting for the second act of the ballet.
A key character, Drosselmeyer, a magician and toymaker who gives a wooden nutcracker to the story’s heroine Clara, is also to be played by female dancers for the first time in the theatre’s history.
The move is part of a Black Lives Matter-inspired anti-racism drive at Scotland’s national dance company, in which it had pledged to purge “outdated and racist artistic content” from performances.
Dances from around the world are performed in Clara’s honour, which would have offered a whistle stop tour of exotic foreign cultures for audiences of the original version, which was first performed in Russia in 1892.
Scottish Ballet’s production was first choreographed in 1972 and updated in 2014. Over recent years, there have been claims that “pointy fingers movements, rice-paddy hats, and Fu Manchu moustaches” depicted by Chinese dancers and overly sexualised dances from Arabia are culturally inappropriate.
Christopher Hampson, Scottish Ballet’s artistic director, denied that “rectifying inappropriate cultural stereotypes” would spoil The Nutcracker, claiming the changes for the forthcoming run would lead to a “richer” production.
“At Scottish Ballet we want to drive anti-racism, clear and simple,” he said. “If we see racist stereotypes or if we hear about racism within the ballet world, it must be addressed.
“The Nutcracker was created in 1972, when it was acceptable to represent other cultures through imitation. If we are representing a culture, it’s important that we have done our due diligence to ensure it is done so authentically.”
Addressing the introduction of a female Drosselmeyer, who makes the nutcracker doll and gives it to Clara at Christmas, Mr Hampson said there was nothing about the character that meant it had to be a man.
“Art must evolve to speak to our times, which is why our Drosselmeyer will be played by male and female dancers,” he said.
Scottish Ballet launched its anti-racism programme last year, and cited 1911’s Petrushka, which portrays a violent and lazy character who prays to a coconut in blackface, as another example of a production which is guilty of “proliferating racial stereotypes”.
It refused to specify exactly how costumes and dances would be changed in the forthcoming production of The Nutcracker, saying the modifications were still being finalised.
The organisation admitted that it had in the past “benefitted from institutional and systemic racism”.
It pledged to remove “racist stereotypes from ballet” and said it had “been reviewing our own repertoire, past and present, to do so”.
It has introduced bronze and brown shoes and tights, claiming that traditional pink shoes and white dress “promoted the aesthetics of white dancers.”