Ballet dancers and enthusiasts,

My 300th post is dedicated to today’s 120th anniversary of The Nutcracker ballet, an annual Christmas favourite for people around the world. This is one of my favourite Tchaikovsky ballets, along with Swan Lake. My favourite part is the No 14 Pas de Deux. Something about the music just makes me tear up!

Google’s 18 Dec 2012 Doodle

According to Wikipedia, the ballet was first premiered in the [Imperial] Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on Sunday, 18 December 1892. What is particularly interesting is that the original production was not a success and the ballet only became popular from the late 1960’s on. Below is a photo from the original production, where the children characters were actually played by child students from the Imperial Ballet School of St Petersburg.

English: Photo of Stanislava Belinskaya as Clara (left), an unknown performer (center), & Vassily Stulkolin as Fritz (right) in the Imperial Ballet’s original production of the Petipa/Ivanov/Tchaikovsky ballet “The Nutcracker”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

May we enjoy many more years of The Nutcracker! 🙂

Related articles

• 120 Jahre Nussknacker – und Google gratuliert. / 120 years of Nutcracker – and Google’s congrats (tanzeglueck.wordpress.com)
• RWB’s The Nutcracker (ladyandtherose.wordpress.com)