The Nutcracker is the most well-known ballet in existence. Each year, thousands of ballet companies around the world perform the familiar Tchaikovsky masterpiece, sometimes continuously from Thanksgiving to New Year's. The Nutcracker has become synonymous with egg nog, Santa Claus, and caroling. Its magical tree and dreamlike Land of the Sweets have become engraved in our minds. For so many girls, it is their first taste of ballet and soon becomes the narcotic that makes them clamor for dance lessons and ballet shoes. It's addictive.
The ballet was first performed in 1894, and strangely enough, Tchaikovsky thought it was one of his worst scores. Clearly, audiences didn't agree. I was one of those silly, star-struck girls who saw a ballet company in Princeton perform the tried and true classic when I was two years old, and ever since then, the music and spectacle has taken a strange hold of me. Sometimes I play the music in July, just to brighten my day.
Of course, I wanted to be Clara for years - the most coveted part for anyone under age 12. I wanted to dress in the fancy costume with the big blue sash; I wanted to wear my hair in long, beautiful ringlets. I knew that landing the role of Clara was a bit out of my reach (as was any part in the Party Scene), but I was still slightly heartbroken when I was cast instead as a soldier, a piece of candy, a rat, and Pollichanelle (a girl who comes out of Mother Ginger's skirt).
Every year, The Nutcracker ritual began in September, as soon as the cast list was posted up on the walls of the studio. We crowded around the piece of paper, crossing our fingers and hoping we had gotten good parts. Throughout the fall, Saturdays were for rehearsals. This was always in addition to our regular ballet classes. At first we would watch videos of past performances, then we began committing the steps to memory. By November we had costume fittings. By December, we went to the stage.
During dress rehearsals, I would sit in the dark theater and watch the Party Scene being practiced over and over again. The boys weren't lining up perfectly with the girls. Drosselmeyer's blocking wasn't exactly right when he entered from stage left. I should have been doing my science homework, but there I was, watching the ballet for the millionth time, listening to the bars of music that I could have hummed in my sleep.
Choreographing the Battle Scene was one of the best parts of Nutcracker - especially since I got to play both a solider and a rat. Since the Brandywine Ballet in West Chester, PA had almost no boys, all of the soldiers and rats were played by girls. We got to attack each other, run around with toy guns, even pretend to terrorize Clara. Inside my huge, wooly, rat costume I could jump around the stage with reckless abandon and act deliciously evil.
As a Pollichinelle, I had to crawl on my hands and knees underneath a gigantic Mother Ginger skirt, making sure to hold my hands close to my body so that they were not trampled by Mother Ginger's stilts. Then, on cue, I burst out of the skirt and ran onto the stage, only to be instantly blinded by the stage lights.
When I was 13, it was my job to stand in the wings and help Clara (my friend Elizabeth) change from her party dress into her nightgown in the few bars of music between the Party Scene and the Battle Scene. We only had about 64 counts to get her out of her dress, take down her hair, and switch her from pointe shoes into soft shoes. I stood there in my rat costume armed with a handful of bobby pins and attacked her the second she got off stage. It was a miracle that she ever made it on time.
I loved knowing all of The Nutcracker secrets that I never would have known if I were watching it from the audience. Did you know that the presents never open? Did you know that the snow is held in buckets above the curtain? Uncovering the magic behind The Nutcracker only made it more fun.
Like all good holiday things, The Nutcracker is about tradition. We feel warm and fuzzy inside when we hear Christmas carols because we associate them with our past. And since Christmas comes only once a year, when we hear these familiar songs again, or pull those colored lights out of the attic, we are quenching our thirst for memories. The Nutcracker is the same thing. It is a magical dream world that brings us back to the anticipation of Christmas eves and the excitement of Christmas mornings.
You might think that I would get tired of the ballet after having seen it so many times. But somehow, it never gets old. Even though I have since quit ballet, I am still drawn to the theater every December to experience the ballet that has become such an important part of my identity. For me, The Nutcracker will always be Christmas.
