I hate The Nutcracker. I hate, hate, hate it. From the age of 4 to 14, I was forced to participate in its production every year. My mother, a former ballerina of the School of American Ballet, put me in ballet classes as soon as I could walk, and I stayed in ballet classes until I realized I had breasts.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Nutcracker (although I’m unsure how you could be, given that the Tchaikovsky soundtrack is blared repeatedly through every shopping-mall speaker every holiday season), it’s the balletic interpretation of a short story. It stars a little rich girl named Clara who falls asleep at her parents’ boring-ass holiday party and has wild dreams about her creepy godfather, the family’s tree, and the horde of mice that want to destroy the Christmas vibes of what is effectively one big Model UN meeting of racially stereotyped delegates from the different nations of Candyland.
