Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of December 18th.
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It is the 352nd day of the year, leaving 13 days in 2021.
On this date in 1892, the Nutcracker ballet premiered in St Petersburg, Russia.
The now widely popular Christmas poroduction of the show, whose score was written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, had an inauspicious beginning.
One critic called the ballerina who portrayed the Sugar Plum Fairy as podgy and corpulent. Another said dancer Olga Preobrajenskaya (the Columbine doll) was "completely insipid." The choreography was deemed "quite amateurish," and the libretto "lopsided."
Yet, it endured. A later production of the two-act ballet -- an adaptation of an adaptation by Alexandre Dumas -- used adults as the majority of the dancers, instead of the children who originally performed. The first full performance outside Russia was in Britain in 1934, and the San Francisco Ballet gave the first performance in the United States in 1944. It since has presented the show every Christmas Eve and throughout the winter season.
Other ballets, particularly in the United States, quickly followed the San Francisco example. Today, major ballet companies take in up to 40 percent of their revenue on the Nutcracker alone.
And while it has been criticized for its cultural and ethical stereotypes, ballet companies have worked to eliminate some of the worst examples.
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