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Published on: 12/21/2003
Last Visited: 12/25/2003
By Jennifer FisherYale University, 230 pp., illustrated, $27
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How this happened is the subject of "Nutcracker Nation," by Jennifer Fisher, a California critic and dance historian.
It's a book that needed to be written -- but not in the form Fisher offers.She flits around more than the Dew Drop Fairy, touching down on topics from the ballet's possible racist and sexist aspects to versions that include hula and bharata natyam, nods to multiculturalism.
The book is supposedly built around two productions of the ballet: that of the National Ballet of Canada, and the one danced by an amateur group, the Loudoun Ballet in Leesburg, Va.It would have been an interesting comparison had Fisher stuck with it.But the two troupes pop up only occasionally, not enough to make the reader care about them.
Even when Fisher talks about the community spirit behind the all-volunteer Leesburg group -- the local doctor who staffed the flower table in the lobby, the retired CIA agent who coped so well with restless little boys -- she does so in a dry, documentary tone. (The book came out of her doctorate dissertation, as the heavy footnoting and bibliography attest.)
She abandons Loudoun to offer fun facts about "Nutcracker": Chelsea Clinton's participation in the Washington Ballet's production, for instance, which the author ties to the selection of "Nutcracker" as the 1994 White House Christmas decorating theme.Continuing the immigrant metaphor with which she began the book, Fisher contends that the White House appearance meant that "Nutcracker" had finally earned full citizenship.