Swan Lake may be the work that spells “ballet” to most people, but it is The Nutcracker that keeps those swans—and the art form—financially afloat. New York City Ballet’s trademarked gold standard, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, has run every December since its premiere, in 1954, barring one coronavirus gap year. It is through The Nutcracker, set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s beloved score, that most children encounter classical dance for the first time. For many dancers—myself included—the dream of one day joining a ballet company took root at a Nutcracker performance. Although the professionals complain throughout each grueling annual run, most regard this holiday tradition—and cash cow—with affection.
It was only after I retired from the stage, some thousand Nutcracker shows later, that I realized the ballet tapped into the season’s spirituality as much as its economics. Sitting in the audience during the Mozartian overture for the first time in decades, I contemplated Rouben Ter-Arutunian’s painted scrim of a rosy angel reaching out to a shooting star. It hadn’t occurred to me before that the second act begins with a live-action iteration of this tableau.
Teensy angels—the youngest cast members, on loan from the School of American Ballet—surround their lovely leader, the Sugarplum Fairy in her pink tutu, her star-tipped wand held gracefully aloft. Rather like Mary Poppins jumping into Bert’s sidewalk art, or the Parisians strolling through Seurat’s pointillism in the musical Sunday in the Park with George, Balanchine brings audiences into that opening backdrop and makes it come alive.
Stars and angels, potent symbols of faith and the divine, recur throughout the production. The child protagonists, Marie and the Prince, walk reverently toward the North Star in the snowy woods at the end of Act One. And they fly away in the reindeer-drawn sleigh at the end of Act Two—a pair of angelic, future ballet stars shooting across the sky. The image is laden with religiosity, aspiration, and ephemerality, plus a savvy touch of Santa Claus consumerism.
Balanchine was a lifelong member of the Russian Orthodox Church. In New York, he regularly attended the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign at 93rd and Park. (His funeral there was an S.R.O. affair.) Nevertheless, the strength of his bond to organized religion waxed and waned—as is to be expected of someone who went through five wives and manipulated human bodies for a living. What never wavered, however, was his allegiance to the music, ritual, and pageantry of the Church. His faith was grounded in the routine act of gathering to worship beauty. His art was, too. Temples and theaters are separated by a very fine line.
So are performers and spectators. When I was on the other side of that scrim during the Nutcracker overture, my favorite place to be was on the set’s petite couch upstage, cocooned in yards of petticoats and the gold and red silks of the costume I wore as Frau Stahlbaum, Marie’s mother. From this vantage point I could see only what was lit faintly from backstage: the stagehands four stories up doing crossword puzzles in the flies, and the grand Christmas tree in profile—thin and flat like a paper doll. Not a creature is stirring behind that angel painting, not even a Mouse King.
“To me, ballet exists only when people are performing,” Balanchine said, “otherwise it doesn’t exist.” That cozy, inanimate moment alone in the scenery taught me that the audience is as essential to the magic of The Nutcracker as the dancing of Balanchine’s steps. In this populist offering of divine spark, the audience breathes life into the largely two-dimensional stage realm, igniting the alchemical work of the dancers, the musicians, and the crew. It is a radical feat of co-creation and interdependency, especially now, in our age of passive immersion in personal screens. Balanchine’s Nutcracker may be a perennial blockbuster, but it is also an exalted illustration of how every single performance involves a communal act of faith.
The Nutcracker is on at New York City Ballet until January 4, 2026
Faye Arthurs is a former dancer with New York City Ballet. She writes about dance for Fjord Review, Dance Magazine, and the George Balanchine Foundation
