NYCB Vol. 13 No. 37 - Nutcracker

[37/50] Counting down 50 NYCB Nutcrackers this year with stories from NYCB dancers past and present! Today we hear a Jerome Robbins' Nutcracker memory.

As some or most of you may know, Balanchine delegated the task of choreographing the battle scene in between the toy soldiers and the mice in the Nutcracker to Jerome Robbins in 1954, so Robbins had been involved in this production from the very start!

This story, however, takes place in 1983, and the 1,000th performance of the Nutcracker, which was also Peter Martins’ retirement from the stage.

“[…] on this evening it became a once-in-a-lifetime event. Jerome Robbins, in eye patch, frowzy wig and patched clothes, made a terrific debut in the first-act role of Herr Drosselmeier, the ambiguously sinister-benevolent guest who presents the nutcracker to the little girl, Marie, at a Christmas Eve party.

“Robbins researched the part by studying a tape of Balanchine himself playing Drosselmeier in a 1958 “Playhouse 90” telecast. Robbins re-emerged during the final curtain calls to hug Martins and crown him with a bright green laurel wreath. Heather Watts was a brilliant Dew Drop, cheered at the end of the Waltz of the Flowers, and Suzanne Farrell a ravishing Sugar Plum Fairy in her final duet with her longtime partner.”

[Quoted from Newsweek Magazine, 1983. Written by Walter Clemons]

Photos by Martha Swope.