10/11 The ‘Nutcracker’ Chronicles: The Marathon Begins

November 10, 2010, 3:54 pm — Updated: 9:21 am -->
The ‘Nutcracker’ Chronicles: The Marathon Begins
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

A scene from New York City Ballet’s production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.”

Readers who ever shared the stage with Drosselmeyer, watched a loved one dance with him or simply attended a cherished performance of “The Nutcracker” — I have a request: send us your photo memories and comments on this very American holiday classic.
Why, you ask? I’m about to undertake a “Nutcracker” marathon. Starting with two stagings of the seasonal classic before Thanksgiving, I hope to catch as many productions of this institutional Christmas ballet as I can around the United States, from coast to coast.
This won’t be some quantitative competition. Most of America’s “Nutcracker”s all happen on the same three weekends in December. I could see more, but only by taking all-day flights that arrived on time. Every time. In winter. As it is, the airline and ballet industries could alter my plans. But I mean to see at least 20 productions, some of them more than once.
Even seasoned ballet-goers shake their heads ruefully at news of this project. “The Nutcracker,” not my favorite ballet, played no part in my own childhood. But I’m hoping that the connections between “The Nutcracker” and America — connections I explore in this essay for Arts & Leisure — will lead me to discover both the ballet and the country in greater depth.
It’s not as if every company’s “Nutcracker” is alike. Far from it. In Balanchine’s version, at City Ballet this month, the Nutcracker and the heroine are children; they watch the climactic adagio danced by the Sugar Plum Fairy ballerina and her cavalier. In Alexei Ratmansky’s, a premiere being danced by American Ballet Theater next month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the hero and heroine are also children, but the couple who dance the great adagio are their imaginary visions of themselves. In Mark Morris’s “Hard Nut,” also at BAM next month, the children are played by adults, and in the adagio they are joined in love by a whole community of couples. And this only scrapes the surface of “Nutcracker” variations.
It is, of course, possible that by the end of December I will never want to see another “Nutcracker.” But I’ve already seen many over the last 30 years, and I’m still finding more in the music and the ballet’s implications.
Surely I’m not alone in my “Nutcracker” explorations. Help me in my project by sending in your memories. Submit your photos here and comments below. A gallery of reader photos will be posted on nytimes.com. And check back in with ArtsBeat over the next six weeks as I report on my travels.