What is the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"?
Q: What is the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"?
A: The "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" is a dance for a ballerina. It is the third movement in The Nutcracker pas de deux, which is from Act 2 of the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker. It is danced by the principal female dancer and choreographed by Lev Ivanov to music written by Tchaikovsky.
Q: What instrument did Tchaikovsky use to create this music?
A: Tchaikovsky used a celesta, an instrument that looked like a piano but sounded like bells. He found it in Paris in 1891 and asked his publisher to buy one so he could keep its purchase secret from other Russian composers.
Q: When was the Nutcracker Suite first performed?
A: The Nutcracker Suite was first performed on 19 March 1892 for the Russian Musical Society in St. Petersburg.
Q: Who was the first Sugar Plum Fairy?
A: Antonietta Dell'Era was the first Sugar Plum Fairy who performed this dance number. She was described as being good technician but pudgy and unattractive.
Q: How much dancing does she have to do?
A: The Sugar Plum Fairy has very little dancing to do, which was considered a major defect among early critics. Dell'Era tried to expand her role by putting a gavotte by Czibulka into her score later on during performances.
Q: Why did Tchaikovsky want to use celesta for this piece?
A: Marius Petipa wanted the Sugar Plum Fairy's music to sound like "drops of water shooting from a fountain". Tchaikovsky found that celesta would be ideal for creating this sound and he wanted to introduce it into Russian music with his composition of The Nutcracker Suite so he asked his publisher to buy one secretly so other composers wouldn't get wind of it before him and use it too soon.
Q: How does Roland John Wiley describe this dance? A:Roland John Wiley describes this dance as having "a sense of dynamic build up", with short pointe steps, petite batteries, attitudes in various combinations leading up pirouettes and rounds de jambe near its end .
