Section 3: Mice!

One of the most popular and beloved scenes of The Nutcracker is the fight scene with the mice, considered the highlight of Act I, notwithstanding the magical growth of the Christmas tree. However, few audience members realize that the choreography of this scene is not Balanchine’s but rather that of Jerome Robbins, Associate Artistic Director of New York City Ballet. Programs to this day do not acknowledge his contribution. It was Balanchine’s intent to have Robbins credited, and the story goes that when Robbins demurred on financial compensation, Balanchine protested, “It will make you a rich man!” to which Robbins replied, “No George, it will make me a richer man.” Robbins won the argument with the outcome that his involvement in the ballet went unrecognized—unfortunately, because the mouse battle is truly a scene of comic genius. Every nuance, from the pugilistic attacks of the mice to the rigor mortis of the Mouse King, delights and amuses, and the funereal procession of the mice as they exit never fails to bring the house down.

It is interesting to consider why Balanchine chose to relinquish artistic control over the mouse scene, particularly when one notes that his first outing as a soloist in his own dancing career was as the Mouse King in 1909. Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova were among the students abandoned and left to fend for themselves at the Imperial School in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In Danilova’s oral history, which is held at the Dance Division, she recounts how the boys would pull up the floorboards to create fuel to burn for heat. Rats were also an issue, and at one point their situation was so grim that the students were forced to trap and eat the rats as a means to survival. Beneath the shimmering surface of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® lies a darker underbelly, and it is conceivable that Balanchine’s childhood memories were too visceral for him to meet head-on in the mouse battle.