The local studio changed two dances in the classic ballet considered culturally insensitive

By: Mijal Kleinkopf Madrigal

“Nutcracker Season” has performers scrambling to put on a magical show for audiences. But in the 2021 season, one ballet company made an effort to represent different cultures in a more inclusive and positive light.

Evolutions School of Dance (ESD) in Calgary has changed the names of “Arabian” and “Chinese” dance pieces in The Nutcracker to “Coffee” and “Tea” to be more culturally appropriate. These names reflect the Land of Sweets that Clara, the main character, is introduced to in the second act of the ballet.

Pieces known as “Russian” (or “Trepak”) and “Spanish” have been changed to “Peppermint” and “Chocolate.”

Vanessa Wright, ESD owner and director, and Natalka Lewis, ballet teacher and director at ESD, choreographed their own version of these pieces with none of them portraying a specific culture.

“We purposely chose the candy route and then took inspiration with our artistic abilities to pull off those elements of those candy pieces,” said Wright.

ESD performed the classic ballet live for the first time on Dec. 12 at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks in Calgary.

Wright said that the only way ESD would portray these cultures is if they brought in a professional dancer to teach a culturally appropriate dance.

Further changes to The Nutcracker have been made by challenging gender norms. The characters Drosselmeyer, Rat King, and Nutcracker were played by female dancers in ESD’s The Nutcracker adaptation.

In the classic version of The Nutcracker, the “Arabian” dance is meant to represent coffee in the Land of Sweets, while the “Chinese” dance represents tea.

The original pieces have portrayed both Chinese and Arabian culture in a stereotypical light. Dancers in the “Arabian” piece are seen with harem costumes, often doing hand gestures similar to those seen in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In the “Chinese” piece, dancers are often dressed in a tang and may have either a traditional Chinese headdress or farmer hat. Props such as fans and colourful umbrellas are used, which can be seen in some forms of Chinese folk dance.

“It clearly isn’t representative of this [folk] dance, but my first impressions from watching it purely from an artistic or entertainment standpoint, it was enjoyable and impressive,” said Justin Lui, an amateur ballet and Chinese folk dancer based in Toronto. “They take their impressions of it, a very superficial impression of it, and stereotypical ideas of what it would look like with hand gestures.”

Cultural appropriation in ballet dates back to the 18th century with Russian classical ballet. Marius Petipa choreographed the majority of ballets in this era, among them, The Nutcracker.

“A big development of this part of ballet was the balletisizing of folk dances,” said Amy Bowring, executive and curatorial director at Dance Collection Danse. “For example, the dances that were common in Europe like czardas, polka, those kinds of dances became balletisized.”

Balletisizing refers to adding ballet technique and elements to a dance that does possess them.

Bowring goes back to the Romantic Era of ballet, around 1830, characterized by ballets such as Giselle, Coppelia, and La Sylphide. These ballets were set in locations considered exotic, such as in the highlands of Scotland.

“This idea of setting ballets in other countries or bringing in elements of dance from other countries was something that was developed in the Romantic Era and was continued in the classical Russian era of ballet’s development,” said Bowring.

“That’s where you get things like the Arabian dance, the Chinese dance. There’s also a Russian doll dance in The Nutcracker.”

Other than The Nutcracker, classical ballets such as Le Corsaire and Peer Gynt, have depicted stereotypes of SWANA (South West Asia/North Africa).

Bowring theorizes that this fixation on this area started from degrowth in archaeology, particularly in Egypt. Because of this and the proximity between the lands (such as not having to cross an ocean, only having to cross small bodies of water or arriving by land), those images spread easily throughout Europe.

Considering these ballets were made around the Victorian Era, there was a conservative way of dressing. In women’s fashion, necklines were up to their necks, and skirts covered their ankles.

However, in Mediterranean countries, due to the hot weather, people didn’t need to cover up.

“That must’ve been fascinating to northern peoples, right? To come across societies that did not have to be quite so bundled up, quite so covered,” Bowring said.

As society progresses, and people become aware of stereotypes in beloved classics like The Nutcracker, there is still a lot of work to be done both in and out of the ballet world.

As Lui said: “There's room, maybe even a responsibility, for the work to grow and evolve with a more global worldview.”

By: Chloe Cook

Ze Mair, co-creator and performer during rehearsal (Photo by: Zahra Salecki)

What do the words, ‘Wonderland’, ‘Swamp Fox’, and ‘Enduring Freedom’ have in common? Although they sound like nonsense, they were actually military operation code names. As well as the basis of a 12-hour continuous dance installation at Nuit Blanche this year.

It all started with a list of 3,600 military operations that was compiled by Canadian poet Moez Surani. Operations: 1946-2006 was performed by approximately 60 people as a five-hour spoken word piece on the night of Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

“With the general feeling of anxiety and despair that followed the last American election, we wanted to do something that could create some solidarity,” Surani said, as well as a “physical reminder that we are not all alone in this.”

The idea was to make military operations more than just a name and to shed light on the effects that these operations had on real communities around the globe.

“The language that often gets used is from the poetic imagination: dawn, sunrise, freedom, purity. These kinds of poetic-seeming words help to create support for state violence,” said Surani.

Dancers in their fifth hour of performing (Photo by: Chloe Cook)

One of the readers that performed was Michael Reinhart, a performance creator and theatre instructor at Randolph College and the University of Toronto. Although the reading had finished, Reinhart knew that the life of the poem was not over.

“I thought it was really kind of tragic that this naming was not done in public and that we as a community could not contend with the activities that we do as a community.” Reinhart said. “What I wanted to figure out is how to allow Operations to be social.”

Reinhart surely found a way to do just that on the night of Nuit Blanche. With the help of choreographers and co-directors, Magdalena Vasko and Ze Mair, and a handful of dancers, Reinhart turned Surani’s poem into a 12-hour ballet performance.

The dance piece is comprised of a sequence of movements that is repeated once for every military operation while the names are projected onto the wall. Which means that the sequence is repeated continually 3600 times, over a period of 12 hours throughout the night.

When it came to figuring out how to best represent the effects of war, it seemed that there was no better option than ballet to the creators.

“Ballet was an analogy for the military because it's skilled, rigorous, bodies that are able to do extraordinary acts that are deeply impossible yet it appears to have exceptional ease,” said Reinhart.

Michael Reinhart, co-creator of Operations going over the timing of the piece in rehearsal (Photo by: Magdalena Vasko) — Michael Reinhart, co-creator of *Operations* going over the timing of the piece in rehearsal (Photo by: Magdalena Vasko)

According to Vasko, one of the creators of the piece, translating the number 3600 into a series of physical movements was one of the top priorities when choreographing.

Vasko said that being able to represent a statistic in a way that resonated with the audience was also important. “It's interesting to put it into your body, the number that you've been talking about,” she said.

In the piece, there are approximately 25 dancers who perform the sequence of movements across a square patch of grass in the middle of an auditorium. Throughout the performance, the grass begins to fall apart, representing the effects that these operations have on the land, the communities, and the people.

According to Sara Hinding, a dancer in Operations, the duration of the piece also contributes to the message of the dance as the performers get more and more worn down over time.

“By the end of the night we're avoiding each other and we're getting frustrated and we're tired and we don't want to do things and there's dynamics and we're looking dead into the eyes of people in the audience,” she explained.

Volunteers clearing the sod off the floor after the performance (Photo by: Chloe Cook)

Carmen Leardi, who is also an Operations dancer gave an example of how the piece offers a “disturbing” contrast of the effects of the operations.

“(In) one year there were a lot of dancers coming in and the choreography was really quick. Then the next year everything tones down. There are a few dancers in the space and the choreography is stretched over a longer piece of time.”

Although most of the dancers had never danced for 12-hours straight, the tensions were anything but high. Everyone was exceptionally calm and focused.

Veronica Simpson, Operations dancer, said she kept herself busy through the night by experimenting with the choreography.

“I kept myself occupied by finding new places to make contact with the audience members and different ways to execute the choreography while maintaining the same overall form,” she explained.

Audience members were free to come and go as they pleased, allowing them to check the progress of the piece throughout the night.

According to Reinhard, there were around 1,400 people who came through the doors.

Mark Francis, an audience member called the piece mesmerizing and said that he could not stop staring at it due to the different moving parts and the relentlessness of the piece.

“I think the subject matter is obviously very dark and depressing but the form and the soundtrack and everything was super beautiful and I found it really meditative to look at,” Francis said.

Cassandra Alves, another member of the audience, noted the similarities between the military and ballet.

“It definitely parallels as if you're going through any kind of military operation which is kind of scary. The dancers literally go through it in a different form,” said Alves.

As for Vasko, who was also a performer in addition to being a creator, said finally performing the piece with all of the dancers was cathartic.

“To collectively be so devoted felt like we were on a battlefield fighting for the same cause,” Vasko said, “It was like a funeral, a remembrance, a memorial and a sacrifice all at the same time.”

Although no one is chomping at the bit to dive into another night long performance anytime soon, the experience is one that the audience, performers, and creators will never forget.
Hinding said after the performance that is was a test of her abilities, “In my opinion a piece like this is a true testament to the human spirit and what it is capable of.”

Dancers in motion during a rehearsal (Photo by: Magdalena Vasko)