The Hard Nut is Back at BAM for the Holidays
The Hard Nut is coming home to BAM for the holidays! Created by the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1991, this boisterous reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s beloved The Nutcracker first appeared at BAM for Christmastime in 1992. Beloved by audiences of all ages, the show has become a holiday classic in its own right, returning to the BAM stage for six encore runs including the newest, Dec. 12—22.
Of course, if you’re setting out to create a new classic, it doesn’t hurt to start with one of the most beloved ballets of all time. The Nutcracker, created by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa as a two-act classical ballet in 1892, is one of the most recognizable works in the repertoire.
What’s more, The Nutcracker is a ballet especially beloved by children for its fanciful cast of characters, including the heroic Nutcracker Prince, the sinister Mouse King, the Sugar Plum Fairy, twinkling Snowflakes, twirling Angels, leaping folkloric dancers, and so much more. Generations of young New Yorkers got to know the wintery wonders of The Nutcracker through fairytale stagings by iconic choreographers like George Balanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Mark Morris set out to create his own unique version of this perennial winter wonder while serving as Director of Dance at the prestigious National Opera House of Belgium. Envisioning a Nutcracker both familiar and new, he reinstated passages of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s children’s novella, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” that Petipa and Tchaikovsky left out of their ballet.
Morris based his playfully witty retro-modern visual approach on the comic book art of Charles Burns, whose crisply drawn work evokes monsters and gangsters to tell complex modern-day stories about growing up. Starting with sketches by Burns, Morris conceived a dance that would combine sweetly nostalgic and boisterously optimistic images of American family life with playful allusions to the sometimes scary challenges of childhood, adolescence, and romance.
Adrianne Lobel’s sets transplanted The Nutcracker from its Romantic German origin to a swinging modern household illuminated by a console TV. Costume designer Martin Pakledinaz created flamboyant retro-chic outfits that brought this cartoonish yet relatable world vividly to life onstage. Raucous parties, dancing G.I. Joes, whimsical costumes, and a “Waltz of the Snowflakes” like no other make The Hard Nut a wonderful, whimsical theatrical adventure.
And yet even so, this eye-popping invention remains at heart a family-friendly homage to a beloved classic work. Despite a radically different vision and tone onstage, it’s still Tchaikovsky’s luxuriant score—performed live by the MMDG Music Ensemble—that drives this colorful retelling, with Morris’s lyrical, instantly appealing choreography preserving the warm spirit of an essential family holiday tradition.
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