The Mark Morris Dance Center will be closed December 23, 2024 – January 1, 2025.

The Hard Nut

The Hard Nut

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The Hard Nut

The Hard Nut

Premiere

Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie

Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie

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The Hard Nut - Snow
The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0167 600x400
The Hard Nut - Baby Carriage
The Hard Nut - Flowers
The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0243 600x400
The Hard Nut - Snow

The Hard Nut - Snow

The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0167 600x400

The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0167 600x400

The Hard Nut - Baby Carriage

The Hard Nut - Baby Carriage

The Hard Nut - Flowers

The Hard Nut - Flowers

The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0243 600x400

The Hard Nut Brooklyn 2015 Julieta Cervantes 0243 600x400

Details List

Choreography Mark Morris
Music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker, op. 71
Scenic Design Adrianne Lobel
Costume Design Martin Pakledinaz
Lighting Design James F. Ingalls
Instrumentation orchestra and children's chorus
Number of Dancers 33
Runtime Act l: 47 minutes; Act ll: 43 minutes

Details

Based on the book by E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Production based on the work of Charles Burns.

Synopsis

Act I
Dr. and Mrs. Stahlbaum’s annual Christmas Eve Party. Their children Fritz, Marie and Louise wait in the den. Party dances: polka, hokey-pokey, hesitation, stroll, bump, waltz. Friend of the family Drosselmeier brings animated toys that he’s made. He gives a Nutcracker to the children. Fritz breaks it. The children fight. Dr. Stahlbaum changes the subject. The guests go home. The family goes to bed. The housekeeper cleans up.

Marie can’t sleep and comes downstairs to see if the Nutcracker is resting comfortably. At midnight she is frightened by rats. Everything in the room grows to giant size. G.I. Joes led by the Nutcracker battle rats led by the mutant Rat King. Marie kills the Rat King with her slipper. She falls unconscious. The Nutcracker is transformed into a young man. Marie is tucked in. A worried Drosselmeier makes his way through the blizzard.

-curtain-

Act II
Marie is in a fever. Drosselmeier comes to see if Marie is resting comfortably and tells her one of his stories:

THE HARD NUT

Once upon a time a King and a Queen had a beautiful baby girl named Pirlipat. The Queen’s old enemy the Rat Queen threatened to ruin little Pirlipat. The nurse and the cat were left to guard the baby at night. While the nurse and cat slept, the Rat Queen destroyed Princess Pirlipat’s face. The Royal Family was horrified by the sight of their formerly beautiful daughter. The Rat Queen explained that the Princess would regain her beauty only after a young man cracked the hard nut, Krakatuk, with his teeth and stepped backwards seven times. The King commanded Drosselmeier to find the hard nut or face decapitation. Drosselmeier set off in search of the hard nut. He traveled the world for fifteen years before finding it back at home.

The ugly teenage Pirlipat watched as one young man after another attempted to crack the hard nut. The last one to try was Drosselmeier’s own nephew. He succeeded. On his seventh step backward he stepped on the Rat Queen, killing her. Pirlipat became beautiful and rejected the young Drosselmeier as he started to become ugly – like a nutcracker…

At this point Marie interrupts the story and offers her love to young Drosselmeier. Mrs. Stahlbaum acknowledges her daughter’s new maturity with a flower dance. Everyone in the world joins Marie and young Drosselmeier in celebrating their love. The two go away together forever.

Epilogue
Louise and Fritz are sent to bed.

Press Quotes

  • "Fun and amazement dance in the same steps; the choreography lifts the whole audience through a crescendo of changing emotions."
    New York Times
  • "You've never seen a 'Nutcracker' quite like this before."
    HuffPost
  • "Morris' The Hard Nut is both fresh and a little fresh, funny, and disarmingly touching; when a flurry of confetti (twenty pounds per night) falls down during the "Waltz of the Snowflakes," The Hard Nut can utterly melt us with its beauty."
    East Bay Express
  • "In a ballet set up with broad comic strokes, one might expect parody, but instead, Morris gives us one of the most wholly satisfying blizzards in the history of "Nutcrackers," mining the rich Tchaikovsky score for moments of rushing exhilaration and breathless cascades. "
    San Francisco Chronicle
  • "It’s got comedy and pizzazz; character-acting and technical dance; visual dynamism and choreographic depth; delightfully unexpected surprises, all set to Tchaikovsky’s terrific Nutcracker Suite score."
    DanceTabs
  • "“…a heartfelt story, delicious costuming and set, and thoroughly engaging dancing, with terrific dancers to take it all on.”"
    San Francisco Chronicle

Related Press and Media

Published in The New York Times

It’s a Blizzard Onstage. Here’s All the Dirt.

This month, two of the finest examples are on display in New York. In “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at New York City Ballet, dancers gleam like ice princesses as they flit across the stage in brisk petit allegro jumps under a steady snowfall that eventually reaches blizzard proportions. And in “The Hard Nut,” by Mark Morris, the dancers, male and female, throw snow while dashing across the stage in sleek formations. The effect in both is a thrilling merging of motion and music.
Read Full Article

Published in San Francisco Chronicle

Mark Morris–What a ‘Nut’!

Octavio Roca for San Francisco Chronicle
West Coast Premiere of joyful, funny work
Mark Morris brought The Hard Nut to Berkeley on Saturday night, and the Nutcracker will never be the same. Then again, it may just be more of everything that is wonderful about this happiest of ballets. Could this be the Nutcracker for the 21st century?
Read Full Article

Published in Bachtrack

Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM: Twenty-Five Years of The Hard Nut

It’s not hard to say why Mark Morris’ rendering of the holiday Nutcracker classic is better than all the rest. In contrast to other productions I’ve seen, Mark Morris has created a party scene for the first act which is unrivaled.
Read Full Article

Published in The Financial Times

The Hard Nut, BAM, New York — ‘Funny, cynical and wise’

Mark Morris begins his Nutcracker conventionally enough, with a Christmas gathering. But this party, set in Ice Storm suburbia, amounts to a riot of self-interest. The hosts’ preening teenage daughter (Lesley Garrison) wants sex. Their boy (June Omura, more demonic with each passing year) wants trouble. The clueless dad (Morris as a man who has mistaken himself for a cartoon) wants to appear in charge. The maid (Brandon Randolph in a detailed role debut) wants as much fun as her thankless job permits. The venturesome guests want to get it on with anyone but the person they came with. And the mom (delectable John Heginbotham) wants to be sedated.
Read Full Article

Published in The New Yorker

The Genius of “The Hard Nut”

After twenty-five years in Mark Morris’s version of “The Nutcracker,” Kraig Patterson’s maid still embodies the spirit of the piece.
Read Full Article

Published in The Washington Post

What the Rockettes and The Hard Nut teach us about the meaning of life

Like the Christmas Spectacular, “The Hard Nut” is retro-inspired. It takes place in the 1970s, with a comic-book look based on the off-kilter perspective of Charles Burns, the D.C.-born creator of such teen-horror graphic novels as “Black Hole” and “Blood Club.” The decor for the Stahlbaums’ Christmas party includes a white aluminum tree, a deluxe television console and the prominent positioning of a cocktail cart. The characters are superbly detailed, and masculinity and femininity are easily transferable. Mrs. Stahlbaum, portrayed with gallant faded grandeur by John Heginbotham, is desperate for her happy pills and the booze to wash them down. As Dr. Stahlbaum, Morris is benignly oblivious.
Read Full Article

Published in bachtrack

‘The Hard Nut’…or ‘How I Beat the Holiday Blues’

f you’re like me, this time of year can be a sore trial with all the forced holiday cheer. There’s so much pressure to be jolly and all of those obligatory holiday shows just strain your patience. You’re thinking, please, not another production of The Nutcracker! The good news is that you don’t have to suffer any more. You can re-discover your inner holiday mirth by going to see The Hard Nut with the Mark Morris Dance Group. From start to finish, this production is a triumph courtesy of Morris’ abundantly affectionate imagination.
Read Full Article

Published in DanceTabs

Mark Morris Dance Group – The Hard Nut – New York

The gap left by the departure of Alexei Ratmansky’s Nutcracker for the West Coast – where it seems to be enjoying a successful run – has been filled this year by the return of Mark Morris’s now classic The Hard Nut. Made in 1991 for the Théâtre de la Monnaie, it was Morris’s farewell to Brussels, where the company had spent a productive, if embattled, three years. In short, local audiences and reviewers never really took to Morris’s irreverent style. With The Hard Nut, he gave them one last piece of hard candy to break their teeth on.
Read Full Article

Published in Gotham Magazine

‘The Hard Nut’ Puts a Modern Twist on ‘The Nutcracker’

Mark Morris' modern take on The Nutcracker sizzles at BAM. Twenty-three years after its American premiere, Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (December 12–20). “The challenge is to keep it fresh, current, and surprising,” says Morris.
Read Full Article

Published in Financial Times

The Hard Nut, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York – ‘Hilarious and touching’

“Nobody can listen to The Nutcracker any more,” Mark Morris once exclaimed, because “it’s used to get you to buy everything you can imagine.” His hilarious and deeply touching Hard Nut may return the magic to the score but it also revels in the junk the music drove us to consume.
Read Full Article

Published in blouinartinfo

Holiday Fare: Two ‘Nuts,’ Plaid Glad Tidings, and a Jersey Boy

Twenty-three years after its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut” returns to the venue through December 20 as a modern classic. That status was not entirely assured when this cheeky re-imagining of the ballet set to Tchaikovsky’s beloved “The Nutcracker Suite” first electrified audiences. “It’s deepened over the years,” says Morris now. “People who saw it as kids are now bringing their own kids.”
Read Full Article

Published in The New York Times

Mark Morris’s ‘The Hard Nut,’ Tchaikovsky With Cartoon Wit and Verve

The greatest single “Hard Nut” dance is the Snowflakes waltz at the end of Act I. No other treatment of this famous music so excites its audience, and again Mr. Morris’s secret is timing. And yet how crazy it is, with these unisex dancing Snowflakes in their bizarre bikini-tutus and skewed shell hats, releasing snow from their hands now in steady drizzles, now like explosions of cocaine. First, we laugh at, then we laugh with, these creatures. They’re preposterous; they’re life-enhancing.
Read Full Article

Published in The Huffington Post

You’ve Never Seen a ‘Nutcracker’ Quite Like This Before

“I wanted a giant, giant number of snowflakes, but I thought, ‘Why are snowflakes women?’ I’m not sure. Once you’re frozen, it doesn’t matter what your sex is.”
That's how choreographer Mark Morris recalled his inspiration for "The Hard Nut," his edgy, gender-bending take on "The Nutcracker," which returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York Dec. 12 after a five-year absence. The Mark Morris Dance Group's production, which has become a holiday tradition in its own right, breaks from the traditional "Nutcracker" mold by transporting the yuletide coming-of-age story from Europe to mid-20th century American suburbia.
Read Full Article

Published in The New York Times

Dance this Week: Alina Cojocaru, Liz Gerring and an Alternative “Nutcracker”

The Hard Nut and Mark Morris

Of all the many “Nutcracker” productions I’ve seen, this is one of only two (with Alexei Ratmansky’s for American Ballet Theater) to play Tchaikovsky’s score complete in the correct order; and (unlike Ratmansky’s) it has a live choir for the wordless snowflakes sequence.

Read Full Article

Published in The New York Times

Next Wave at BAM: New Season to Include Binoche, Whelan, Soto and Kentridge.

The [Next Wave] festival will be capped in December with performances of "The Hard Nut," Mark Morris's take on "The Nutcracker," which will return to BAM after a five-year absence.
Read Full Article

Published in The New York Times

‘Hard Nut’: Rethinking by Mark Morris

Jennifer Dunning for The New York Times
A great deal has been said and written about "The Hard Nut," Mark Morris's production of "The Nutcracker," which opened on Tuesday night and will be performed through next Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But no one has summed the piece up better than Mia Sanchez, a young dancegoer who is quoted on posters for "The Hard Nut." "It was weird," the 9-year-old critic wrote, "but I loved it."
Read Full Article

The mission of the Mark Morris Dance Group is to develop, promote, and sustain dance, music, and opera productions by Mark Morris and to serve as a cultural resource to engage and enrich the community. Propelled by Core Values of community, access, excellence, and creativity, MMDG is committed to ongoing work on inclusion, equity, and diversity to ensure its programs are welcoming and accessible to all. See our Commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access.

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