One year ago in this very blog, we nominated “Nut Rocker” as a candidate to join the batch of holiday songs with which we’re currently being bombarded. We contended that this lively, rock and rolling interpretation of The Nutcracker would give all of us a two-minute respite from Mariah and George and Elvis and Bing and everyone else on that too-tight playlist of songs you are legally required to hear between Thanksgiving and Dec. 25.
That didn’t happen so we’re doubling down. For every day between now and Christmas that “Nut Rocker” isn’t played by one of those “all Christmas music all the time” radio stations, we’re destroying an Elf on the Shelf. We mean it.
Anyhow, you can enjoy Tchaikovsky’s perennial favorite as performed by Next Generation Ballet, the Patel Conservatory’s pre-professional dance troupe, at The Straz Dec. 21-23, the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before Christmas, which makes it all the more sparkly.
This will be The Nutcracker as you’d expect to hear (and see) it. There are, though, productions that take the story in different directions.
Choreographer Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut reimagines The Nutcracker through the lens of comics artist-author Charles Burns. The Hard Nut is set in 1960s U.S. suburbia, and the staging reflects Burns’ skill at artfully portraying both the mundane and grotesque, often at the same time.
A jazz rearrangement of The Nutcracker by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn was first heard on a 1960 album, The Nutcracker Suite. That work provides the foundation for choreographer Donald Byrd’s acclaimed The Harlem Nutcracker, which moves the setting to Upper Manhattan and makes Clara a widowed Harlem matriarch.
Tchaikovsky’s score has been appropriated into countless TV shows, movies, commercials and anything else that needs an audio clue for Christmas. It’s instantly recognizable and also cost-effective.
Lisa Simpson pointed out that music from The Nutcracker is popular for soundtracks because “you don’t have to pay for the music rights.” Perhaps inevitably, this leads into a Simpsons-style lyrical reworking of “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
Speaking of animated series and The Nutcracker, Ren and Stimpy also employed “Sugar Plum Fairy“ with some frequency. The music’s delicate, tinkling melody was a marked contrast to the show itself, which was bizarre, grotesque and hilarious. For one season, anyway.
Perhaps the most endearing rendition of music from The Nutcracker is by TwoSet Violin, an Australian duo who have built a following in part through humorous looks at classical music on YouTube. Brett Yang and Eddy Chen both play violin. They also incorporate a rubber chicken. If you’ve ever doubted the tonal possibilities of a rubber chicken – and haven’t we all? – prepare to have your reality rearranged. Their violin-and-rubber-chicken arrangement for The Nutcracker’s “Waltz of the Flowers” must be seen and heard to be believed. And don’t forget “Nut Rocker.”
