ing lasts very long, you’re always off to
something new.” For Caroline Miller,
chief executive at Birmingham Royal
Ballet (BRB), it drives new audiences to
ballet. “This is often their first trip to
enjoy a ballet on this scale — with the
Tchaikovsky music, an orchestra and
amazing sets. Our show this year has 57
dancers, 13 students, 22 children, 6
actors — it’s a great spectacular and
absolutely integral to bringing new
audiences to the art form.”
Each version has its unique appeal.
At BRB, Peter Wright’s classic produc-
tion delivers elegant enchantment; he
also created the Royal Ballet’s sumptu-
ous show. Pandemic excepting, English
National Ballet has performed The Nut-
cracker every year since 1950, while
Bourne’s version for New Adventures is
the youngest and cheekiest, opening in
a grim Victorian orphanage and build-
ing to a full sugar rush.CHRISTMAS DANCE
In most productions the story
begins when young Clara is given a
nutcracker doll at her family’s fes-
tive party. When she sneaks down-
stairs at midnight, magic breaks
out: she helps toy soldiers subdue
marauding mice, her nutcracker toy
becomes a prince and they travel
through whirling snowflakes to the
land of sweets. Then the plot melts
away, and the second half is all pranc-
ing confectionery. It’s hardly aPixar plot, tooled to deliver thrills
and tension.
“If you built a new Christmas
ballet today you wouldn’t build Nut-
cracker,” Hampson says. “The plot
doesn’t add up — but that doesn’t mat-
ter. What The Nutcracker is to ballet is
an invented tradition. It has become
partnered with the festive season.
That’s what gets celebrated.”
Dancers chart their lives in Nut-
crackers, passing from children
scampering through the gamut of
dancing sweeties before seeing out
their careers as the doddering seniors.
Hampson, 48, first appeared as an
eight-year-old at Northern Ballet,
and says: “I’ve either been in it,
choreographed it or directed it every
year since.”
He remembers “gruelling tours”
dancing with English National Ballet
(“never a night off ”); these bonbons for
the audience are bunions for dancers.
For BRB, gradually returning to full
strength after lockdown, this year will
be especially tough, the two-show days
requiring everyone to dance multiple
roles. “They’ll all be working their
socks off,” Miller says.
Would any family ballet do the trick?
New titles occasionally intrude: the
Royal Ballet has ventured Alice’s Adven-The Chinese dance,
performed in crude
make-up, was amended
HAVE WE REACHED PEAK
NUTCRACKER?
Sweet treat Nothing says
Christmas like a production
of The NutcrackerT
he Nutcracker might well have
been dumped after its first per-
formance. Despite Tchaikov-
sky’s glorious score, the
reviews from St Petersburg in
1892 were dire: “Quite simply
boring, and unsuitable for dancing.”
Yet in America The Nutcracker has
become synonymous with Christmas.
In a land without public subsidy, Amer-
ica’s professional ballet companies live
or die by their annual Nutcracker.
There are estimated to be more than
300 US productions each year, from
high school shows to even an X-rated
version with bare breasts and cocaine
replacing snowflakes.
It has long been a staple on British
stages — but is this the year leading
companies go properly nuts for Nut-
cracker? As live performances stagger
back, audiences and income are at a
premium, and this ballet is the closest
thing to a sure bet. “I’ve never been so
excited about Nutcracker as I am this
year,” says Christopher Hampson, artis-
tic director of Scottish Ballet.
You can’t easily avoid a Nutcracker
this winter. While panto audiences are
running scared — the UK Performing
Arts Survey found that only 50 per cent
of people who usually see a festive
show had booked tickets — The Nut-
cracker offers familiar pleasures and
sedate audiences who don’t spray spit-
tle shouting: “It’s behind you!”
All four of the UK’s big ballet compa-
nies perform it, and there’s also Mat-
thew Bourne’s popular modern ver-
sion. Together, they’re giving 329
performances — and Bourne’s tour
extends the festive season past Easter
(and has also inspired the Christmas
windows at Fortnum & Mason’s flag-
ship store). For the first time, four of
these shows crowd into London during
the same week before new year.
Why does The Nutcracker have such
a hold on audiences? “It’s the variety of
dance on offer,” Hampson says. “Noth-With a snowstorm of Nutcrackers sweeping the country
over Christmas, David Jays discovers that this timeless
classic that keeps many ballet companies afloat is changing
ZOE MARTIN/SHUTTERSTOCK ANDREW ROSS, TRISTRAM KENTON, JOHAN PERSSON, LAURENT LIOTARDO, KAROLINA KURAS8 28 November 2021