Eight minutes later, Trump and first lady Melania descended the red carpeted staircase – passing Franklin Roosevelt's portrait along the way – to the grand foyer of the White House, where a marine band played amid snowy trees adorned with miniature crystal nutcrackers.
Sparkles, leg warmers, stage makeup and even a good-luck miniature pinscher named Clara (for the "Nutcracker" character, naturally) were all part of the scenery, as dancers practiced their routines, tried to stay limber and, when prompted by cameramen, let out huge cheers, gyrated sexily and did the wave.
The set for the evening's first ballet, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, is a familiar Victorian living room that includes a miniature version of the company's Nutcracker tree, silver garlands and all.
"I got a Nutcracker," she said, brandishing a miniature plastic bottle of fruit punch and God-knows-what.
CALEFAX An engagingly atypical reed quintet from Holland — playing on two clarinets along with oboe, saxophone, and bassoon — comes to the Frick Collection to offer arrangements of works by Rameau, Ravel ("Le Tombeau de Couperin"), Scriabin (a clutch of early Études), and Duke Ellington (the "Nutcracker Jazz Suite") along with Tchaikovsky's original "Ouverture Miniature".
Thanks to Tchaikovsky's music — with its blend of fantasy, humor, suspense and vehemence, and its "Gulliver's Travels -type changes of scale beTravels -typeiature and the changesl — it's nof too much to place the "The Nutcracker" ballet among the many great 19th-century depictionscalechildhood.
A small object hangs at her side, interpreted variously as a nutcracker or a pair of scissors in the form of a skeleton or a miniature portrait, hinting, perhaps, at a romantic disappointment.
I suppose we will never now see a "Nutcracker" that ends with bees, but for at least one "Nutcracker" performance this Christmas, I plan to shut my eyes and imagine that miniature realm.
STAMFORD Stamford Center for the Arts "The Nutcracker," Connecticut Ballet.
Is this "Nutcracker" heresy?
THE NUTCRACKER By Geraldine McCaughrean.
