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The Nutcracker is Back, My Favorite Nut

By Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram
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Published on January 11, 2011

It's that time of year again...Visions of One to many Many Sugar Plum Fairies

It is Nutcracker Season and suddenly there are jobs available for guys to be Cavaliers and gals to be Sugarplum Fairies with small companies all over the United States. Dance companies rush to attract audiences and make some money, parents glow as their children are “exposed” to the world of the ballet and stage managers wince as their crews stand on the sidelines armored with buckets and mops to clean up the emissions of overexcited kiddies in the party scene- don’t want the ballerinas to slip on that.

As visions of sugarplums dance round our heads, Alastair Macualay, the Senior Dance Critic for New York Times who is journeying lands of sweets chronicling Nutcrackers around the US, (I guess someone has to do it) proclaims, Jennifer Ringer, Principal Dancer with the New York City Ballet, looks “ as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many” to the furor of many dancers and blogging writers calling for his resignation. For my tastes, many of the City Ballet ballerinas are so thin it is scary. I have found myself wanting to take them home and make them something good to eat. Of course I am a modern dancer by training and the rebellious food-and–wine-loving, full –figured, bare-footed, mostly-naked, anti- “we have to be flowers and fairy princesses” Isadora Duncan is one of my heroines. Soooooo, while I support my mates in ballet and my friend’s children who are dancing in the Nutcracker. It ain't the most wonderful time of the performance year for me.

My favorite Nutcracker happened on New Years Eve many moons ago when I was lucky enough to be hanging out backstage at NYCB because my friend was dancing. I am not sure if it still exists, but there used to be a time that New Year's Eve at NYCB was spoof time. Dancers were allowed (?) to play little tricks-i.e. a different cavalier would appear throughout the ballet. I don’t think anything drastic. I remember a small assortment of tutu clad beauties approaching Peter Martins while asserting “we just wanted to thank you for this opportunity to dance” then grinning ear-to-ear to reveal that fact that they had blacked-out every other tooth in their head — I thoroughly savored that moment and it still makes me smile.

The Dance Enthusiast is sponsoring a My Favorite Nut – Nutcracker Contest. We are asking you to share your favorite Nutcracker memories—be they sweet, silly, or sarcastic.

The prize for the most memorable story is one pound of confections from NYC’s one and only Li-Lac Chocolates. (Will mail it or ship it) Christine says, “Enter to win, so I will not have to eat the pound of chocolates and look like a very round sugar plum.”

Contact info@dance-enthusiast.com with your story and My Favorite Nut- in the subject heading - also submit any pictures or links you would like us to put up with your story. Stories due January 6th.

Christine Jowers, (below left) founder of The Dance Enthusiast, dreaming of The Land of Sweets ”While she waits to perform her 6am duet, during an all night performance of “The Odyssey” with Choreo Theatro.+Jowers (below right) Rehearsing her Role as Penelope in Choreo Theatro’s “Odyssey” Photo by Marina Levitskaya.

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