The first performance of The Nutcracker in 1892 at the Marinsky Theater

THE blogger Sunshine Mary and her husband took their children to a local performance of The Nutcracker. It was a new version of the story, in which many details were changed. For one, Clara’s father and uncle were nowhere to be found. Clara, apparently the child of divorce, lived with her mother. Instead of the scripted male characters, there was  “a large black man who comes dancing onto stage, shaking his hips all around Mrs. Stahlbaum and several other female dancers. He has no role in the story and his only purpose appears to be for the amusement he provides the lay-deez with his hip-shaking.”

Sunshine also writes:

Rather than charming girls in ballet slippers dressed as peppermint bon-bons, there were chubby teenagers in black pants and t-shirts vogueing – I kid you not. The older teenaged girls were dressed in bright-red flapper dresses with slits up each leg; one dance move involved them sitting on the floor facing the audience with their legs spread open. Hey, it may not have been a family-friendly event this time, but at least all the husbands had something to look at. They looked like they were one step away from breaking out the stripper poles.

Big girls were doing ballet lifts with smaller girls like gender-bending androgynes; it is truly strange to watch 17-year-old girls lifting 12-year-old girls up above them and twirling them around, then cradling in their arms like they are channeling Fred and Ginger. Oh, and there was also hip-hop and tap and a little bit of ballet thrown in, but unfortunately there was no discernible story line. The whole thing was a disconnected, disjointed, booty-shaking hot mess. For children. Welcome to Ann Arbor; coming soon to a town near you…

Our daughters were very quiet on the way back to the car. One of them finally said, “I think I like the original version better.”

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