After The Nutcracker and Dispatches from the Yoga Wars

Last year, Spencer Dew wrote a piece about The Nutcracker for Sightings that I really liked and I meant to get it up before Christmas actually came, but since the Christmas tree in our living room is still up, I think it's not too late.

I have always had a great fondness for Tchaikovsky since I was first introduced to him and Rimsky-Korsakov in music class at St. Timothy's elementary school. I listen to the entire score of both The Nutcracker and Swan Lake nearly every week, and so I was pleased to be able to see the Carolina Ballet's production of The Nutcracker and Black Swan (both of which were great) two weekends ago.


I'll write more on Black Swan later, since I think it's a great tale of mimetic rivalry that might even make in into my Girard book if it's not too far afield. But regarding the Nutcracker, I've also been reading (on my Kindle) Jennifer Fisher's Nutcracker Nation: How an Old Word Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World. It sets out to be a sort of ethnography by a ballerina-turned-anthropologist, but when I began it I was more interested in the background material it provides than the ins and outs of sanitizing the Tea Dance.

I haven't gotten to Fisher's interpretation of the story itself, but I'll be interested to see how it compares with Spencer's. So please go read Spencer's archived Sightings article here and while you're at it, check out Wendy Doniger's article on the "Yoga Wars," more on which later as time permits.