Maurice Sendak and the Nutcracker

Maurice Sendak and Kent Stowell

In 1979, one Kent Stowell, choreographer for the Pacific Northwest Ballet, contacted illustrator Maurice Sendak about collaborating on a new ballet production of The Nutcracker. Sendak was not interested at first, until Stowell asked him to read the original story by Hoffmann. Sendak was struck by how different the Hoffmann tale and the standard ballet version of the story were. Desiring to help create a new version of the ballet that honored Hoffmann, Tchaikovsky "and ourselves," he worked with Ken on what the new ballet needed, as well as designing sets and costumes to bring the story to life with a visual signature wholly Sendak.

The ballet opened in December 1983 to great acclaim, and the Sendak-Stowell edition of The Nutcracker ran through 2014, before the Pacific Northwest Ballet switched to George Balanchine's version.

Still, there is quite a bit from that version of the ballet out there that exists.

My favorite thing about it is that Sendak's work spurred Ralph Manheim's translation of the original Hoffmann story, reworking many of his design work pictures into illustrations, and offering many new illustrations as well.

The book opens with an introduction by Sendak talking about how he came on board the project, what he disliked about the ballet and what he appreciated about the Hoffmann story, and how he and Stowell adapted the book for ballet. He also briefly mentions that he could only find the original story in Dover's The Tales of Hoffmann, and later talks specifically about illustrating the book, that pictures appear in the book that were not used onstage. He also addresses the translation, quoting the editor of the Dover book in that most English translations of Hoffmann aren't done skillfully and lose a lot of Hoffmann's unique voice, but he believes Manheim finally got it right.

In this way, the book acts as a perfect souvenir for the ballet: it contains some words about the adaptation and production, a faithful translation of the original source material, and illustrations that were originally set and costume designs, or are in the same style. It was published in 1984, and copies were likely for sale in the lobby of the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

There was an audiobook of this translation released. Sadly, it's not available through Audible and the audio cassette and CD copies are out of print, but it was read with great gusto by Christopher Plummer and was accompanied with music from Tchaikovsky's score.

The biggest remainder of this edition of the ballet was a film adaptation, essentially filming it, but using some movie magic. Released in 1986, it was titled Nutcracker: The Motion Picture. There were some alterations done to make the ballet more cinematic, notably the ending being altered as cutting between different locations is possible in film, but hard to convey onstage. The film also had a soundtrack album released, containing the complete score.

Part of the ballet's staging is using the story of Pirlipat as a metaphor for Clara's growing up (despite the love given to Hoffmann, it was decided to go with the name Petipa had given her), using an opening the movie didn't use in which Pirlipat chooses to dance with the Nutcracker or the Mouse King. Clara in the film appears to be about fifteen.

The movie opens in Droselmeyer's workshop, showing many shots of the dolls and clocks, Tchaikovsky's score kicking in as he begins to design then build an elaborate clockwork castle. As the opening theme is concluded, Drosselmeyer has fallen asleep after completing his task. The castle comes to life and shows us Clara asleep in bed.

This version re-frames most of the story as Clara's dream, starting with her dreaming about fighting with Fritz, who invites a mouse who bites her. She appears to turn into a mouse herself, but it cuts to the family's Christmas party, and it seems that was just a nightmare.

At the party, Drosselmeyer displays his castle, where a couple of figures dance. The ballet features a sequence with masquerade dancers as Clara discovers the Nutcracker. The interesting thing here is that the music is from Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades rather than The Nutcracker. The masquerade dancers are supposed to represent Pirlipat, the Mouse King and the Nutcracker, but the camera doesn't focus on them, instead having many glances between Clara and Drosselmeyer, who watches her anxiously, which is supposed to suggest an introverted, anti-social nature for the old man, but comes off as creepy.

The rest of the first Act is similar in story to most other versions of the ballet, complete with the growing Christmas tree. I have heard that the Mouse King's tail goes across the stage while he's onstage, but am unsure as to how he was depicted. The film shows him as a giant monstrous mouse, most of his heads being behind him. He appears to grow larger until Clara throws her slipper at him, forcing him to turn into a normal-sized mouse, the Nutcracker chasing him through the giant coat he was wearing, Clara following, coming out the other side replaced with an adult dancer and finding the Nutcracker now transformed into a handsome prince. As they journey together in this fairyland, snowflakes dance.

The second act depicts a more accurate version of the multi-cultured Candy Town of Hoffmann's story, with the same actor who plays Drosselmeyer as a Pasha. In the stage version, Clara declines to return home and at the end, the Pasha is revealed to be Drosselmeyer and Clara is highly disturbed when she removes his eyepatch. In the film, the prince and Clara dance and the Pasha lifts them high into the air, and then suddenly breaks his magic, having them free fall to the ground, transforming back into a Nutcracker and a child before Clara awakens from her nightmare, the final pieces of score being a curtain call in Drosselmeyer's clockwork castle.

To reflect the many cultures described in Hoffmann's story, the people who dance in Act 2 are depicted as people from Chinese, Indian, Arabian and other Eastern cultures instead of foods. One beloved alteration was instead of having a dancer represent coffee in the Arabian dance, a dancer dressed as a caged peacock was brought out of a cage to perform. During the Chinese dance, a dancing tiger in a costume dances, but its paws are tied to the other dancers: it's being controlled.

The Sendak-Stowell edition of The Nutcracker tries to draw on nightmares more than dreams, with anxiety building throughout. They play on Drosselmeyer's character and his relationship with Clara as a starting point. Critics have noted that Drosselmeyer seems antagonistic to her throughout, probably playing on how in the original story, she blames him for the battle as he muffled the clock so the chimes wouldn't scare away the mice. Yet Hoffmann is able to finish the story with a more or less happy ending while this production ends it with nasty surprises.

Given how many editions of The Nutcracker ballet tend to go for a sweet fluffy production, I can only assume a mind like Sendak would think of taking it in the opposite direction and create a more disturbing version. It attempts to bring a core to the storytelling of the piece as opposed to other productions in which the plot is wrapped up in the first act and the second act is entirely the celebration. And while this attempt to bring a more cohesive story to the ballet is welcome, I'm not entirely sure if Hoffmann would have wanted it to be so disturbing.