Section 1: The Beginnings
While it is hard for audiences today to separate George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® from the holiday season, the original production—which debuted in February 1954—was only modestly successful. The gradual association of the ballet with the festive season owes a lot to the televised productions that aired in 1957 and 1958. These broadcasts — the first a truncated version of the ballet that ran under an hour, the second a more complete version featuring Balanchine as Drosselmeyer — brought the ballet and Balanchine’s choreography into the homes of Americans all over the country, and helped to spur the movement of ballet companies creating their own unique versions of the story.
The 1957 broadcast aired as part of the CBS show The Seven Lively Arts, and was the first televised production of any version of The Nutcracker. The 1958 broadcast, with narration by popular actress June Lockhart and featuring performances by New York City Ballet stars Arthur Mitchell (as Arabian Coffee) and Diana Adams (as the Sugar Plum Fairy), as well as the novelty of Balanchine himself as the magician Drosselmeyer, solidified the ballet in the American public’s imagination. The televised broadcasts can also be seen as a midway point in the development of the ballet from the original production in 1954 through to the new and final version that was unveiled in 1964, as the sets and costumes and choreography all changed in the 10-year period. Balanchine continued to adapt and refine the dances, with some parts changing completely (for example, Arabian Coffee switching from a male to a female role, first danced by Gloria Govrin in the 1964 production) and other variations receiving light modifications.
Although often viewed as the definitive production of the ballet for American audiences, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® owes much to the original 1892 production, choreographed by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa. Also of note, San Francisco Ballet had mounted Willam Christensen’s vision of the ballet (the first full-length production in the U.S.) in 1944, while the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo mounted Alexandra Danilova’s version in 1945 (Danilova reconstructed much of the Ivanov choreography from her legendary memory). So, as with any great tradition, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® is not the work of a single person, but rather a reflection of collective experiences over time. No wonder it became a nostalgic holiday classic.
