Was it the slant of light yesterday – or simply the general darkness of the present – that got me thinking about the holidays of my childhood? December meant then, of course, Christmas trees and lights (everywhere but home) and dreidels and clementines and, wonderfully, that week-long escape from the rhythms of school. It also meant that regular trip with my grandparents to Millburn’s Paper Mill Playhouse to see that strange, marvellous dream of a ballet, The Nutcracker.
Perhaps it is the current gloom that makes the past so attractive right now. It’s true that I’d prefer not to think about how over half my country of citizenship has granted a vengeful and erratic felon the nuclear codes for a second time. And yes, I’d like to distract myself from how our country here has passed a resolution that threatens to label Jews antisemites, while enabling Beatrix von Storch, an AfD leader with impeccable Nazihintergrund, to grandstand about “imported antisemitism”.
And I’d love to ignore how the entire government has fractured – and the likelihood that an even more conservative and intolerant one shall take its place. And that’s not even considering that our dear city – a city whose whole reputation rests on its artists and creators – has decided to slash its culture budget by at least €110 million over the next two years. So come, let’s turn away from the confirmed ethnic cleansing and ongoing genocide in Gaza. Let’s escape the catastrophic present. Let’s instead visit the mind that gave us ‘The Sandman’. Let’s leap into fantasy.
Despite the looming cuts, the lights aren’t yet out in the theatres.
Because that is what The Nutcracker has always been: a terrific fantasia. Originally an 1816 novella by the German romantic E.T.A. Hoffmann, the book transported its readers to the realm of the Mouse King and the Nutcracker (who in the original is broken and disfigured). It had real darkness to it. Its protagonist, Marie, almost bleeds out as a result of putting her arm through her glass cabinet when she faints after the battle between the troops of the Mouse King and the Nutcracker.
Her godfather sees everything and refuses to help her escape this dream world until she marries his nephew, who was cursed to be a nutcracker until he was loved. (There’s a reason Freud was constantly interpreting Hoffmann stories.) Alexandre Dumas smoothed out some of the tale’s weirdness in his French translation, turned Marie into Clara, and then, with a composition from Tchaikovsky, it was adapted into a two-act ballet in 1892, choreographed by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa, all taking place over Christmas.
The Nutcracker was not so well received at first. Critics noted an imbalance of the two acts: the first was full of action (the entrance into the world of the Mouse King and the fight with the Nutcracker), the second effectively static (that’s where Clara enters the sweet world of Candy Mountain). While Tchaikovsky’s music was long beloved, the fame of the ballet ultimately comes down to George Balanchine, who helped to make it into a holiday tradition. Balanchine, who led the New York City Ballet, knew the piece from his early years in the Soviet Union. Though he was not the first to stage it outside of Russia (that was 1934 in England), Balanchine’s account of the Russian performances inspired William Christensen to direct the San Francisco Ballet’s 1944 performance.
Ten years later, Balanchine premiered his own rendition, and, in 1958, Balanchine’s The Nutcracker was the first ballet broadcast on television in the US. It became a sensation, quickly supplanting Christensen’s version as the canonical U.S. Nutcracker. Its mix of formal innovation and pleasurable storytelling made it into a holiday headliner. And Balanchine’s company, with the support of the State Department and $6 million from the Ford Foundation, exported its version across the world. Hoffman might be classic German culture, but The Nutcracker as we know it today is more a product of the international art and thought of the Cold War than German Leitkultur.
I didn’t know any of this as a child. But I do remember going year in and year out, my mother eventually bowing out (there was only so much of ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ that she could take – fair) and entrusting me to my grandparents. Can I remember what enchanted me so about the strange performance? Truth be told, probably the swords – and the leaping. It was just such fantastic fun.
At least this year, there will still be performances of Der Nussknacker in Berlin. Despite the looming cuts, the lights aren’t yet out in the theatres. So The Nutcracker doesn’t have to be an artefact only of memories, or history. As part of its seasonal calendar, the Admiralspalast is staging the ballet. You can also catch it at the Theater am Potsdamer Platz. And then there’s a “Kinder tanzen” at the Deutsche Oper – a 60-minute version with the Berlin Children’s Ballet Company. So, as pessimism slips over me and weighs heavy on my limbs, that’s where you’ll find me. I’ll be taking in the opiate of dreams, following the dancing figures into the past, hoping – against hope – for a better future.
