‘Nutcracker’ Memories and Mayhem

Elana Altman in Helgi Tomasson's "Nutcracker," San Francisco Ballet, 2010 (Photos by Erik Tomasson)

By Erich Yetter
With photos courtesy of the San Francisco Ballet

I never get tired of The Nutcracker. No matter how many times I hear the music or see the ballet, there is something uniquely addictive about its familiarity, like being unable to resist gagging down another sickly sweet cup of holiday eggnog. Though it is thought that neither Tchaikovsky nor Petipa liked the ballet very much, it has remained an American staple of the Christmas season for over half a century (ever since George Balanchine launched his archetypical version for the New York City Ballet in 1954).

My memories of this classic go back to my youth in Texas, where the local ballet demagogue, Ingeborg Heuser, would annually whip up a Nutcracker as outrageous and fascinating as her wild stories about dancing the Trepak for Hitler at the Deutche Oper Berlin. Her choreography was often clever, and, being a creature of the European theater, her staging was brilliant. I recall the mice in disheveled uniforms hilariously fighting the soldiers with shiny silverware.

San Francisco Ballet in Tomasson's "Nutcracker"

Thus I was bitten by the ballet bug and began my journey through the magical and often terrifying world of classical dance, not unlike Clara, the ubiquitous ballet’s reluctant heroine herself. My lust for Terpsichore landed a scholarship dancing with the Fort Worth Ballet (associated at that time with Texas Christian University) and a decidedly wry version of The Nutcracker by the artistic director Fernando Schaffenburg, a former Ballet Russes  premier danseur and a German-Mexican hybrid (like myself). As the lascivious butler in the first act, I remember seducing the French (of course) maid and outlandishly flirting with all of the female party guests. I was like an oversexed Jeeves. In the second act, I danced the Spanish pas de deux (a spirited pastiche of Don Quixote) but secretly admired the Reed Flutes (a trio of trim ballerinas in silver unitards with black circles on their legs as “air holes”) who were pursued by a French Horn (a male dancer dressed in curious stripes, beret, and red neckerchief). This distinctive Nutcracker held together nicely, despite some idiosyncrasies.

For the next two years, I served a tour of duty as one of the legion of toy soldiers in Ben Stevenson’s beautiful rendition. His Nutcracker was a thoroughly human affair, with a dignified though sometimes comical scenario and a lyrical beauty. The Houston Ballet Academy boys were the toy soldiers (we wore masks to dehumanize and unify our wildly differing body types), and we fought the mice who were en pointe (the academy girls, among whom I partnered a young and incredibly energetic Lauren Anderson).

Yuan Yuan Tan and Artem Yachmenikov in Tomasson's "Nutcracker," San Francisco Ballet, 2010

My early 20s gave into a wanderlust of sorts as I discovered what a dancer’s “gypsy” life really meant. There was a Nutcracker in Columbus, Ohio; one in Beaumont, Texas; another in San Antonio; and a return to Ballet El Paso (now called Ballet of the Americas), with several performances across the border in Juarez, Mexico (an endeavor now unthinkable). I got married and danced in London and Ireland for three years, visiting Nutcracker only as a spectator at Peter Wright’s opulent version for the Royal Ballet in the Covent Garden Opera House. His Party and Battle Scenes are some of the most wonderfully convincing I’ve seen, perfectly matching the style and mood of the music.

Repatriating found us at Ballet Memphis (then Memphis Concert Ballet) and a brand new adaptation of Nutcracker choreographed by the company’s ballet mistress, Janet Parke. For the next 11 years, I would dance every male role in her production, with a special fondness for the roles of Herr Stahlbaum and Arabian. My colleagues would tease me about my deep Arabian tan, which nightly came from umpteen cakes of “Light Egyptian” body makeup.

One year, dancing the Russian Trepak in the second act, I experienced a “wardrobe malfunction” and danced the entire thing with one hand holding up my voluminous red trousers. And once I recall witnessing the male dancer portraying Mother Ginger lose his balance and fall forward, in slow motion it seemed, awkwardly exposing the stagehand pushing the cart and the hapless Polichinelles, who were huddled together like orphans in a storm. I began to realize that the perfect world of Nutcracker was not without its surprises.

After retiring and becoming artistic director of Peoria Ballet in Illinois, I staged my own version of Nutcracker, which proved an equally exciting adventure. Near the beginning of my tenure there, the first performance of a newly designed and constructed nutcracker head met with disastrous results. During the Battle Scene in Act 1 of a school matinee, the dancer portraying the title character became disoriented and accidentally, and quite dramatically, leapt into the orchestra pit (fortunately the musicians’ chairs and stands had yet to be set up, so it was empty). The curtain came down and paramedics rushed him to the hospital. Luckily, the overstuffed foam padding inside the mask cushioned his head and neck, and he completed the run with minor bruises to his backside and his ego. At least the stage crew found the humor in the situation. Peering down into the pit the next day, I saw what looked like a police chalk outline of a fallen body, like that at a murder crime scene.

One of the most dramatic Nutcracker mishaps occurred on a tour to a nearby town in a small historic theater, when the precariously rigged “growing” tree ripped down the middle as it was being flown off, sending a shower of shattered light bulbs across the upstage panels and hanging like a torn Christmas present 15 feet in the air. The valiant and quick-thinking snowflakes simply shifted their choreography to the front 20 feet of the stage and serenely finished the act. (We should have known there was trouble in the air since earlier in Act 1 a black side curtain suddenly caught fire and the stage manager had to snuff out the flames, with the aid, ironically, of some leg warmers.) The show must go on.

This year I returned to Nutcracker via collaboration with the local symphony and funded by the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture grant. Ten dancers and four musicians participated in a “flash mob” rendition of the Waltz of the Flowers from Act 2. Stepping out of the holiday mall crowd in street clothing and fur-lined boots, they twirled and danced to the all-too-familiar music. Passing shoppers laden with gifts, bags, and coffee cups were struck dumb.

So the saga continues. I still love The Nutcracker and fastidiously view every recorded edition available and attend as many live versions as possible. I somewhat envy The New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay’s self-imposed assignment to compare the varied productions across America, though all one really needs to experience the magic of Nutcracker is Tchaikovsky’s glittering strains and a little imagination.

Erich Yetter is a visiting faculty lecturer in ballet at the University of Akron, where he choreographs and teaches ballet technique, pointe, ballet history, and viewing dance. He came to Ohio after 10 years as artistic director of Peoria Ballet. You can view one of the 2010 Nutcracker mall performances here.