But it was only from the mid-1950s that The Nutcracker began to establish itself as a Christmas perennial, chiefly through two productions, one of them presented by the London Festival Ballet at the new Royal Festival Hall, and the other by another Russian émigré, George Balanchine, whose New York City Ballet version was televised in the US on Christmas Day in 1957 and 1958 - the perfect moment at which to catch the baby-boom generation and its new obsession with the small screen, as well as its Red Shoes-inspired infatuation with the glamour of classical ballet.
Read the whole article here.
The article skews a little British for us American readers, but does explain how the explosion of Nutcracker in the United States follows after Balanchine's New York City Ballet production (San Francisco Ballet reminds us in their marketing materials that it had the first Nutcracker in the United States. But one could hardly argue that it was the influential production, after seeing all the community productions which vaguely copy Balanchine's conception of Nutcracker).
1 comment:
This is really interesting -- thanks for linking to it!
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