As a ballet lover, I am a novice, but if there is one I can name, it’s The Nutcracker. This year, the Christmas tradition of schools and ballet companies that come together for their annual performance has been transferred to the Internet, if they can continue. The Nutcracker it is a great source of revenue for companies, many of whom worked on tight budgets before the coronavirus pandemic. The dance itself is rich and attractive, but it can be criticized for its lack of diversity and representation from other cultures – as well as the history of ballet itself.
The Nutcracker was first introduced in 1892 and has been a seasonal hit in New York since legendary choreographer George Balanchine Nutcracker it was first performed at the New York City Center in 1954, with Maria Tallchief dancing the lead role of the Sugar Plum fairy. Today, Lincoln Center is home to the New York City Ballet. The New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division – the largest dance library and archive anywhere in the world, accessible and free to anyone in the public – is also at Lincoln Center.
The Nutcracker it comprises only a small percentage of the library’s dance collection, which consists of a few thousand images. Ballet itself comes to us in all its Prussian fairytale glory; it was based on a short story written there in 1816. In 1958, the American version, choreographed by Balanchine, was transmitted to Americans in their homes. According to Dance Division curator Linda Murray, this was a big part of ballet’s success and integration into popular culture. “This moment was fundamental because people experienced ballet in their own homes amid their own traditions. And June Lockhart’s well-known voice as a narrator made the work seem accessible and cemented ballet as a holiday tradition, ”said Murray.
The Dance Division, which celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, was founded by a young librarian named Genevieve Oswald in 1944. At the time, there was no complete archive of photos, videos or dance memorabilia – just a handful of dance images that have been classified with the music collection.
“As a woman, frankly, a lot of dance materials were delivered to her,” said Murray. “Oswald immediately understood that the dance archives were unique in nature and could not be adequately described using music study conventions. She saw that dance as a subject needed its own department with its own guidelines for description and care. ”Oswald worked with archivists and modern dancers to donate to the collection, and his charisma quickly convinced the dance field about the importance of the division’s work.
In the 1930s and 1940s, now famous collaborators in modern dance, such as Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham, lived in poverty; Humphrey felt compelled to contribute to the collection because he realized that he would not be able to take his work beyond his own generation without help.
“The traditional way of making an archive was that people saved notecards, letters and things gathered throughout their lives,” explained Murray. The most fragile state in which everything exists on our phones today is more difficult to archive, which means that today’s TikTok dances can somehow end up in the canon with The Nutcracker, but it would be difficult.
In America, the Nutcracker the narrative is often manipulated to include elements of the local community. In Washington, DC, the Washington Ballet makes a version in which George Washington is the Nutcracker; the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago has a version that takes place during the world fair; and in Newport, Rhode Island, ballet takes place in the historic mansions on Bellevue Avenue. “Part of the joy of The Nutcracker is to see your hometown represented in the choreography, ”said Murray. “It is more than a ballet, it is an idea of identity.”
The ballet’s plot, in a nutshell, is about a young girl who grows up attached to a broken nutcracker in the shape of a toy soldier. On Christmas Eve, he comes to life and faces an evil rat king. Like many old children’s tales, it is spectacularly dark at times, while intricately interweaving scenes and characters designed to capture the magic of Christmas Eve and childhood.
As the productions adapted to incorporate regionality, some central aspects of dance and choreography remain unchanged – and they were called for being racist. During the second act, the ballet takes the audience on a trip “around the world”, inspired by the different Christmas treats represented on the Christmas holiday – a Spanish-inspired dance for hot chocolate, an “Arab” dance for coffee and a Chinese-inspired tea dance. Georgina Pazcoguin, soloist for the New York City Ballet, and Phil Chan, advocate of the arts and choreographer, founded the organization Final Bow for Yellowface in 2017 to expand the conversations being held at companies around the world about outdated representations of Asians in The Nutcracker and other ballets.
“The attitude of ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s culturally relevant, as long as it’s beautiful’ is outdated,” said Chan, who is also currently a dance researcher at the NYPL, researching representations of Asian Americans in dance and in external and geopolitical influences on art.
A statement on the Final Bow for Yellowface website echoes this sentiment: “Just as Blackface is limiting and degrading for African Americans, continuing to present a 19th century view of Asians does not allow for nuances of character for Asian American dancers today . ”
“If we take the European center for The Nutcracker, what are we really looking at? Many dances need to be updated to make them less racist, sexist, Islamophobic by today’s standards – the 1800s were a different time. We are used to seeing Shakespeare in all different environments, but ballet is too slow for this game. That can change and we can adopt a 21st century anti-racist approach imagined for people today, while keeping the ballet tradition alive, ”said Chan.
We’ve seen dancers, costumes, and rat kings from the historic Jerome Robbins Dance Division photo collection over the decades of this New York production – from Technicolor 1940s to the funky 1960s and extremely Swayze performances in the 1980s.
Here is a list of streaming dance companies The Nutcracker.