NUTCRACKER / NINA KAPTSOVA - DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Nutcracker/BOLSHOI BALLET

BALLET DANCER: nina kaptsova

COMPOSER: TCHAIKOVSKY

COMPOSITION: 1892

ÁLBUM: DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY

LABEL: DECCA

GENRE: CLASSICAL

YEAR: 2010

The "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" is a dance for a ballerina. It is the third movement in The Nutcracker pas de deux. This pas de deux is from Act 2 of the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker. It is danced by the principal female dancer. The number was choreographed by Lev Ivanov to music written by Tchaikovsky.

Choreographer Marius Petipa wanted the Sugar Plum Fairy's music to sound like "drops of water shooting from a fountain". Tchaikovsky found the ideal instrument to do this job in Paris in 1891. It was then that he came across the recently invented celesta. This instrument looked like a piano. It sounded like bells. Tchaikovsky wrote,"[The celesta is] midway between a tiny piano and a Glockenspiel, with a divinely wonderful sound." He wanted to use the celesta in The Nutcracker. He asked his publisher to buy one. He wanted to keep the purchase a secret. He did not want other Russian composers to "get wind of it and ... use it for unusual effects before me."

Although the original 1892 Marius Petipa production was not a success, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker began to slowly enjoy worldwide popularity after Balanchine first staged his production of it in 1954. It may now be the most popular ballet in the world.

In Russia, choreographer Alexander Gorsky staged a new version of the work in 1919 that addressed many of the criticisms of the original 1892 production by casting adult dancers in the roles of Clara and the Prince, rather than children. This not only introduced a love interest into the story by making Clara a teenager and the Prince an adult, but provided the dancers portraying Clara and the Prince with more of an opportunity to participate in the dancing.

The Nutcracker (Russian: Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия/Shchelkunchik, Balet-feyeriya; French: Casse-Noisette, ballet-féerie) is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera Iolanta.