Evann Siebens

along with many, many Nutcracking dance artists

xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Territories (Vancouver)

Every December, children in their best finery are accompanied by their families to see their first, and often only, evening-length ballet, The Nutcracker, where sugar plums dance, mice and soldiers fight, snowflakes fall and trees grow. Battalions of children perform, fulfilling newly wrought dreams, while professional dancers tape their toes and groan as their number of ‘Nut’ performances enter the hundreds. It often becomes the ballet we love to hate, but beneath the surface popularity are deeper roots and secular traditions. 

Using archival documentary footage shot by Evann Siebens at ballet schools and companies in New York, New Westminster and throughout North America, this newly-created multiple-channel media installation will explore the humour, oddity and absurdity of diverse Nutcrackers, including the deeply offensive colonial divertissements that continue to be performed. Juxtaposing rehearsal, interview and performance footage, Nutcracker, Multiplied will explore how dancers bend choreography to reflect themselves and how the performances have become a yearly, secular tradition for ballet communities, As one of the protagonists says in the film, “It makes money, which begs the question, why does it make money?”

According to Jennifer Fisher, author of Nutcracker Nation, the ballet “is in the same category as many other ineluctable rituals and rites of passage, the ones that dot everyday life and give it meaning. There are birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations, marriages, funerals, Christmas dinners… and, in North America at least, The Nutcracker, regular as clockwork, performed anywhere someone has ballet shoes, a Tchaikovsky CD, and a dream.”

© Evann Siebens