I Finally Feel it: Nutcracker Magic

Malcolm Paley in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s current production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Photo @ Lindsay Thomas.

I wasn’t one of those kids who spent their early childhoods singing Christmas carols in the neighborhood, or performing onstage during the holiday season in local productions of The Nutcracker. I never even saw the ballet as a kid. I’m sure there were plenty of community productions in the Detroit-area, where I grew up, but we weren’t lucky enough to have a professional, resident ballet company. Besides, Nutcracker is all about Christmas and my Jewish family wasn’t the kind that put up a Chanukah bush in an attempt to fit in, and we certainly didn’t seek out Christmas shows. So, when I hear people rhapsodize about how this is a magical time of year, I don’t really have a point of reference.

Over my years in Seattle, I’ve seen and written about the panoply of Christmas shows, including the myriad versions of Nutcracker, from almost every angle: I’ve watched the stage manager backstage, as she called cues for the growing tree; I’ve documented young kids in tutus and tiaras spinning around the lobby during intermission. It’s been fun to track PNB’s young company members as they’ve progressed from roles as Flowers and Snowflakes to featured soloists to Sugar Plums and Dewdrops. I hope this has given me an intellectual understanding of the ballet’s importance on a lot of levels, including providing the critical financial backbone.

But I think I’ve finally come to understand just how important it also is for both audiences and for the lucky kids cast in the show. I might just get it, that Nutcracker Magic.

This year I had the thrill of watching an opening weekend performance of PNB’s annual production of George Balanchine’s classic ballet from the perspective of a performer. Specifically my friend Malcolm, who this year made his Nutcracker debut as a party boy in Act 1.

Malcolm is one of about 70 PNB School students who perform a variety of roles in every show, from the kids who populate that Act 1 Christmas Eve party, to the angels who open Act 2 with what feels like a magical glide through the dry ice haze that hovers over the surface of the stage, to my favorites, the eight Polichinelles who lurk under Mother Ginger’s extremely wide (and heavy) skirts.

Malcolm began this autumn as a second-year student at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, super serious about ballet. His mother was a colleague of mine, and has kept me apprised of her son’s ongoing infatuation with ballet, and with the company members he’s gotten to know while rehearsing for his Nutcracker debut.

Malcolm first fell in love with ballet listening to Felix Mendelssohn’s score for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, back before Covid. When pandemic-era restrictions were lifted, his mom enrolled him in the PNB school, and now she and her husband are ballet parents, shepherding Malcolm from school to rehearsals to performances. I experience all this vicariously, but I do feel a bit like a proud auntie. (The audience at the performance I attended was no doubt filled with families and friends of other young performers who were equally enchanted).

Malcolm Paley, front, right, and friends dancing at the Stahlbaum’s in PNB’s current production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Photo @ Lindsay Thomas.

Malcolm has embraced this experience. He’s learned every step of his choreography, from greeting his friends outside the big room with the tree, to the game of leap frog he plays with the other little boys, to everyone’s departure from festivities for home and bed.

As I say, I have no personal experience to put Malcolm’s journey into perspective. But before the show I had dinner with two former upper level ballet students once bent on professional careers; both of whom had performed in Nutcracker countless times. They’re in other professions now, but they could still vividly recall early teachers who steeped them in rehearsal discipline. Those same instructors often went too far, restricting caloric intake or holding cigarette lighters under their legs to force them to raise their limbs higher. I hope these antediluvian practices have gone the way of the proverbial dodo. I guess I can ask Malcolm, but he wouldn’t be so eager to go to class if it was still so intense, would he?

I texted his mom at intermission to congratulate her on Malcolm’s performance. She texted back “where are you sitting? He wants to say hello.” Just before the Act 2 music began, I spotted them rushing up the aisle, Malcolm’s face almost as bright as the red curls on his head, his smile gleaming like the lights on the Stahlbaum’s Christmas tree. We only had time to wave, but his joy was unmistakable. This is a facet of the Nutcracker I have never seen, one that was likely repeated a hundred times that night and will be after every child’s performance. I’m so grateful to have been able to share it, if only from afar. I guess I was Nutcracker Magic adjacent, and it was everything I could have hoped. Great job, PNB students!

PNB’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker continues through Dec. 28^th at Marian Oliver McCall Hall at Seattle Center.