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George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®

Choreography

George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Composer

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Music

The Nutcracker, Op. 71, 1891-1892, with an excerpt from The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66, 1889

Costume Design

Ian Falconer

Lighting Design

James F. Ingalls

Scenic Design

Ian Falconer

Staging

Judith Fugate with Peter Boal and Garielle Whittle

Premiere

February 2, 1954
New York City Ballet

PNB Premiere

November 27, 2015

Original Production Premiere

December 6, 1892 Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg, choreography by Lev Ivanov

Principal sponsorship support for the 2015 Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® with original scenic and costume design by Ian Falconer, was made possible through the generosity of Dan & Pam Baty. Additional major support was provided by Patty Edwards, Carl & Renee Behnke, and Peter & Peggy Horvitz.

The works of George Balanchine performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet are made possible in part by The Louise Nadeau Endowed Fund.

Ballet in Two Acts, Four Scenes, and Prologue
based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s tale, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816)

“The Nutcracker at our theater is for children young and old. That is, for children and for adults who are children at heart. Because, if an adult is a good person, in his heart he is still a child. In every person the best, the most important part is that which remains from his childhood.” —George Balanchine

When George Balanchine staged The Nutcracker for New York City Ballet in 1954, it was the six-year-old company’s most ambitious project to date. The choreographer spent more than half of the production’s $40,000 budget on the Christmas tree, infuriating Morton Baum, chair of New York City Center’s finance committee, which had put up the money. Baum asked, “George, can’t you do it without the tree?” to which Balanchine replied, “The ballet is the tree.”

Balanchine had danced in the Maryinsky Theater’s production in St. Petersburg as a child. His roles included soldier, mouse king, little prince, and the lead in the hoop dance, which had been choreographed by its original interpreter, Alexander Shiryaev, for the 1892 premiere. Balanchine remembered the luxurious days before the Russian revolution and held them as an ideal. When Baum asked him to stage The Nutcracker, banking on the popularity of The Nutcracker Suite in the United States, Balanchine said, “If I do anything, it will be full-length and expensive.”

Those first performances of The Nutcracker in 1892 St. Petersburg received mixed reviews. Critics complained the music was “too symphonic” and the ballerina (the Sugar Plum Fairy) wasn’t given enough to do. The scenario had been put together by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theaters and a great Francophile. He used as his source not the E.T.A. Hoffman German original of 1816, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, but Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 French adaptation of Hoffman’s story, Histoire d’un casse-noisette (The Tale of the Nutcracker). Marius Petipa, the esteemed and prolific maître d’ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theater, prepared instructions for Tchaikovsky and mapped out the sequence of dances, yet withdrew due to illness before rehearsals began. The task of choreographing The Nutcracker was left to Petipa’s assistant, Lev Ivanov, whose work was deemed uneven, from brilliant (the kaleidoscopic Waltz of the Snowflakes) to chaotic (the battle between the gingerbread soldiers and the mice).

Yet, the ballet endured and the suite of musical numbers subsequently drawn from Tchaikovsky’s complete score for performance in the concert hall was immediately popular. The composer was particularly delighted by his use of the celesta, the “heavenly” keyboard instrument newly invented in Paris, for the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

As he did with his other stagings of 19th-century ballets from the Russian repertory (Coppélia, Harlequinade), Balanchine followed the ballet’s story closely while adding his own contributions. With The Nutcracker, he referred back to the original Hoffman tale, adding Herr Drosselmeier’s nephew, the keyhole scene, in which Clara and Fritz eagerly anticipate seeing the family Christmas tree, and Clara’s wandering bed. He added some music as well, explaining, “When I did The Nutcracker in New York, I needed an entr’acte. And suddenly I recalled that the violin solo from Sleeping Beauty was the theme that is used when the Christmas tree grows in The Nutcracker. It’s a wonderful melody, with a magnificent upward swelling of sound that leaves you breathless. Tchaikovsky had decided that since no one played the violin solo from Sleeping Beauty he might as well use it here, instead of letting it go to waste!” The production was a huge effort, taxing the company’s resources. When, on opening night, the costumes were far from finished, Balanchine visited Karinska’s workshop with Jerome Robbins and, without saying a word, sat down among the seamstresses, picked up a needle and thread, and got to work. Robbins, who also choreographed the Nutcracker battle scene (an uncredited contribution), joined him.

Balanchine regularly made changes to his Nutcracker, including, perhaps surprisingly, the addition of elements from the St. Petersburg original. In 1968, he added a special effect to the pas de deux of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, in which the ballerina steps onto a sliding track on the stage and, supported by her partner, appears to glide across its surface. He also added wands with snowballs for the Snowflakes at the end of the first act, recalling the elaborate costumes of the Maryinsky’s dancers.

Although Balanchine’s Nutcracker established the ballet as a perennial holiday favorite and became the model for many subsequent productions, the ballet had been danced in the United States since 1940, when Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performed Alexandra Fedorova’s staging of a one-act Nutcracker in New York City. The production subsequently toured the country throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s, giving many Americans their first experience of The Nutcracker. The first full-length Nutcracker in the U.S. was choreographed for San Francisco Ballet by Willam Christensen in 1944, only to be replaced in 1954 with a production by Willam’s brother, Lew Christensen.

When New York City Ballet moved to the newly built New York State Theater in 1964, the Nutcracker scenery was completely redesigned to take advantage of the larger space. (The technical superiority of the new theater allowed an even more magnificent tree.) That same year, a young Judith Fugate, newly enrolled in the School of American Ballet, danced the role of Clara for the first time. She would continue in the role for four seasons before moving on to other parts, eventually joining New York City Ballet and adding the leading roles of Dewdrop and the Sugar Plum Fairy to her repertory. In 2015, Fugate takes on the role of répétiteur, joining with Peter Boal and Garielle Whittle to stage Balanchine’s Nutcracker for Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Peter Boal was accepted into the School of American Ballet in 1975. He first performed in Balanchine’s Nutcracker as a Party Boy. Fugate was his first stage mother and held his hand tightly as she pulled the nervous ten-year-old onstage. He moved on to the role of the Little Prince, and then Bed Boy, another uncredited part, this for a confident teenager who steers Clara’s magic bed. Boal joined New York City Ballet and continued to move through the range of Nutcracker roles, eventually performing as Cavalier to Fugate’s Sugar Plum Fairy. In 2014, Boal returned to New York City Ballet as a guest artist to reprise the role of Herr Drosselmeier for the School of American Ballet’s annual Nutcracker benefit.

Pacific Northwest Ballet has its own Nutcracker history, which now intersects with Balanchine’s. In 1975, Pacific Northwest Dance Ballet Company, as PNB was then called, acquired Lew Christensen’s Nutcracker, performing the work for eight seasons. In 1983, under Artistic Directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, the Company presented a new production with choreography by Stowell and scenic and costume designs by famed children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. The Stowell and Sendak Nutcracker contributed significantly to the Company’s identity, holding the stage for 32 seasons. In 2015, PNB acquired George Balanchine’s iconic production, blending Peter’s Boal’s personal history—his New England childhood and his 30-year involvement with the Balanchine Nutcracker as both a student and professional dancer—with the future of the Company. New designs by another renowned children’s author and illustrator, Ian Falconer, carry the Balanchine staging forward into the 21st century, while the staging by Fugate, Boal, and Whittle affirms the heritage of a tradition reaching back to 1892 and the grandeur of the Imperial era.

Notes by Doug Fullington.

Artist Biographies

George Balanchine

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine (1904-1983) is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. At Balanchine’s behest, the School of American Ballet was founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.

Balanchine’s more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra, was created in 1982. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Among his best-known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway’s On Your Toes (1936). The musical was later made into a movie.

A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world.

Reprinted by permission of The George Balanchine Foundation.

Ian Falconer

Ian Falconer (1959-2023) was an American illustrator, children’s book author, and costume and set designer for the theater. Born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Mr. Falconer graduated from The Cambridge School of Weston, and went on to study painting at the Parsons School of Design and Otis Art Institute. He created 30 covers for The New Yorker as well as other publications, and is widely known for the iconic Olivia children’s book series, which features a young pig and her many adventures. In the world of theater design, Mr. Falconer collaborated with artist David Hockney on the costume designs for the Los Angeles Opera production of Tristan and Isolde (1987). He served as co-designer for sets and costumes with Mr. Hockney on the Lyric Opera’s production of Turandot (1992), and designed the costumes for The Royal Opera’s production of Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Covent Garden. In 1996, Mr. Falconer designed the sets for The Atlantic Theater’s Off-Broadway production of The Santaland Diaries, written by David Sedaris. In 1999, he designed scenery and costumes for the Boston Ballet’s production of Firebird, choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. Mr. Falconer designed scenery and costumes for Scènes de Ballet (1999), and Variations Sérieuses (2001), both also choreographed by Mr. Wheeldon, for New York City Ballet. In 2003, he designed sets and costumes for Stravinsky’s Jeu de Cartes, choreographed by Peter Martins. In 2008, Mr. Falconer completed the set design and oversaw the installation for the operetta Veronique at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. The sets were widely hailed for their use of classic stage sets married with complex moving film images, impressing audiences with innovative theatrical optical illusions. He passed away in 2023 at the age of 63.

James F. Ingalls

James F. Ingalls studied stage management at Yale School of Drama, and went on to work as a stage manager for Yale Repertory Theatre and the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, before turning to lighting design for opera, theater, and dance. He was the Resident Lighting Designer for the American Repertory Theater from 1981-1984 and has worked frequently with theater director Peter Sellars. Mr. Ingalls work for dance companies includes designs for American Ballet Theatre, Dutch National Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Mark Morris Dance Group, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Paris Opera Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, PNB, and San Francisco Ballet, among others. He collaborates frequently with the Wooden Floor Dancers in Santa Ana, California. Mr. Ingalls is the recipient of several Drama-Logue Awards, the Obie for sustained excellence in lighting design, and a National Theater Artist Residency Grant.

Judith Fugate

Judith Fugate is a former principal ballerina with the New York City Ballet and danced roles in virtually every ballet in the NYCB repertory, counting among her partners Peter Martins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Helgi Tomasson. During her career, she toured extensively with groups led by renowned artists such as Mr. Baryshnikov, Cynthia Gregory, and Mr. Martins. Miss Fugate appeared on Live from Lincoln Center with Ray Charles in Peter Martins’ A Fool for You. In the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata, conducted by Placido Domingo, she was partnered by Fernando Bujones and Peter Boal. She left NYCB in 1997 and currently works as repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust and the Jerome Robbins Rights Trust, staging these renowned choreographers’ works worldwide. In addition, along with her husband Medhi Bahiri, she directed Ballet NY, a small contemporary ballet company based in New York City. Founded in 1997, the company also toured the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) studied at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, where George Balanchine later studied piano in addition to his studies in dance. Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular and influential of all romantic composers. His work is expressive, melodic, and grand in scale, characterized by rich orchestrations. His output was prodigious and included chamber works, symphonies, concerti for various instruments, operas, and works for the piano. His works for the ballet include Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, the latter two composed in close collaboration with choreographer Marius Petipa.

Balanchine had a special affinity for Tchaikovsky. “In everything that I did to Tchaikovsky’s music,” he told an interviewer, “I sensed his help. It wasn’t real conversation. But when I was working and saw that something was coming of it, I felt that it was Tchaikovsky who had helped me.”