I get America’s Philistines want to erase Tchaikovsky, Christmas and all things even tenuously Russian, ballet included. Fine. Blackball Tchaikovsky, ban Christmas, Christmas Nativity plays and little kindergarten girls dancing Swan Lake in tutus, like the savages you are. Pretend none of that exists. But, for the love of God, spare us the cultural crassness of Joe, Jill and Hunter Biden and their coked up efforts to be inclusive by setting your wrecking ball on the great Yuletide work of this great Russian, who has brought and who continues to bring so much joy to so many great people of all ages with this magically wonderful work.
If you are going to stage The Nutcracker, you have to be some way faithful to Tchaikovsky’s music and Tchaikovsky’s script.
Given that The Nutcracker, scored by Russian icon Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is such an integral part of our common cultural zeitgeist, not only in the beautiful world of Ballet but of our common Christmas as well, this article examines why the Biden crime family are so intent on belittling it.
Given that the Nutcracker’s Opening March, Waltz of the Flowers, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Russian Trepak are some of the most recognisable melodies of classical music and that, for ballet dancers, The Nutcracker is often their first experience in a full-length ballet, and so is a rite of passage, with a touch of the childishly magic about it, why are these Philistines mocking it?
Because most budding ballet dancers start in The Nutcracker as a page or as an angel, and work their way up to more featured roles as time goes on, The Nutcracker has a special place in their hearts whenever they wander down memory lane. And, as this Dance Magazine article explains, for those ballet dancers who want to continue to ply their trade, The Nutcracker is central to keeping their companies solvent. No Tchaikovsky, no American opera companies.
I get that America’s warlords want to banish everything Russian from the face of the earth but, if you are going to stage The Nutcracker, as you do throughout all of America every single Christmas then, like your Hollywood cartoons, you have to be some way faithful to Tchaikovsky’s music and Tchaikovsky’s script where a young girl, helped by a nutcracker, who transforms itself into a prince, dukes it out with an army of mice, whilst the Sugar Plum Fairy spreads seasonal cheer to the little girl’s various toys that have come to life to defeat the mice. Sure, the plot is not from The Brothers Karamazov but it has been hitting the sweet spot with children and their parents for nigh on 130 years now and that ain’t a bad innings.
So where, you ask, is the beef and what great cultural sin have the Yanks now committed against Tchaikovsky that my previous article on this Russian genius did not touch upon? As the Daily Mail and Fox News pointed out, First Lady Jill Biden tweeted out a video of this freaky White House interpretation of The Nutcracker as she got a group of New York tap dancers to perform in the White House to cheer us all up. She explained this cultural abomination as follows: A bit of magic, wonder, and joy brought to you by the talented tappers of Dorrance Dance, performing their playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite. Enjoy!
Enjoy, my arse and thank Christ she told us it was The Nutcracker as Sherlock Holmes himself would have been hard pressed to deduce that. First off, the decorations are horrible, all garishly overdone red, white and blue American pie that might have worked on a huge 1930s’ star-spangled Hollywood set with Jimmy Cagney, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers tapping away but that does not work within the narrower, more blinkered confines of the White House.
Further, when Cagney, Astaire and Rogers went through their paces, we did not have to try to figure out what was going on as the plot, if such it can be called, was only a rack to hang their excellent song and dance routines on. Nothing wrong with that but those great tap dancers were from the Broadway School of Tap Dancing, rather than from Dixieland’s jazz tap dancing tradition, which drank from all together different cultural wells that had little, bar the use of two feet, in common with ballet.
And though the great Tchaikovsky is but one of many geniuses who showed us the benefits of cross-cultural pollination, not least in The Nutcracker itself, which is based on earlier Franco-German stories, there is no cross-cultural pollination in Jill Biden’s mish mash for the simple reason that there is no culture on display here, only crass kitsch which is, presumably, the domain of that swamp creature.
Instead of exuding seasonal cheer, this production not only insults the great Tchaikovsky and all the American ballet troupes who depend on his work to stay afloat but it offers no signs as to what it is about. Tchaikovsky’s score is muted and it is all but impossible to guess who the Sugar Plum Fairy or any of the other tap dancers are supposed to be. Far from being Walt Disney’s Fantasia revamped, this is more the reflection of those who are destroying his franchise with their narcissistic interpretations of his works.
The overall effect of this work, which seems to have been scored whilst under the worst influences of Hunter Biden’s cocaine pipe, is a disjointed abomination that lacks, not so much a Christmas crib but Jack Nicholson barging his way through a door with an axe yelling “Here’s Johnny” to totally freak out any child unfortunate enough to clap eyes on it.
I get America’s Philistines want to erase Tchaikovsky, Christmas and all things even tenuously Russian, ballet included. Fine. Blackball Tchaikovsky, ban Christmas, Christmas Nativity plays and little kindergarten girls dancing Swan Lake in tutus, like the savages you are. Pretend none of that exists. But, for the love of God, spare us the cultural crassness of Joe, Jill and Hunter Biden and their coked up efforts to be inclusive by setting your wrecking ball on the great Yuletide work of this great Russian, who has brought and who continues to bring so much joy to so many great people of all ages with this magically wonderful work.