Nutcracker? Sweet!
By raincoaster
We are aware, here in the Manolosphere, that there are those who do not love ballet. We feel sorry for them, and we assume that they were traumatized in a horrible pointe shoe accident as toddlers. We seek, therefore, to reintroduce them to this finest of all athletic arts one bunny hop at a time.
We will start them off on The Nutcracker.
Not the story; if you actually read E.T.A. Hoffman you quickly see that he was a nutbar of the very nuttiest type. We start them off right with the ballet itself.
Now, this ballet, it has many things going for it. It has magic. It has a mysterious sugar daddy. It has a prince. It has soldiers and cossacks and battles and rats. And, if it’s the Pacific Northwest Ballet version, it has sets designed by Maurice Sendak and special effects whipped up by Boeing engineers in their spare time (presumably making airplanes stay up is dull relative to making Christmas trees explode).
Oh, and it has dancing, too.
But, ballet fan though I may be, I maintain that the best part of the Nutcracker is the outfits.
Not those outfits.
These ones.
A full third of my motivation for going to this particular ballet is the chance to see all the cute little kids dressed up and looking good; given the fact that ballets are rarely performed adjacent to food or Play-Doh, it’s also the one chance they have to STAY looking good for several hours. Not a few parents cram the photo with Santa into this day; although their children may be overwrought and unhinged by such a jam-packed day, they do look fabulous, and that’s what counts when Aunt Fran is comparing your brood to her sister’s, eh?
But while there are a billion attractive options for girls formal dresses, what have we got for little boys?
Still.
Equal rights, my friends, include the right to be equally fabulous, and I’m afraid this just doesn’t do it for me, velvet though it may be. Go ahead, search: Amazon doesn’t even have a category for boy’s formal wear. I suppose the powers that be simply assume that your boys will be happy with a band tee, a mackinaw, and some overalls for their special occasions. Or variations on the sailor suit, which really hasn’t been the same since Tom of Finland. Really, there’s a huge gap where boy’s formal wear could be; if you trawl through “boy’s suits and sport coats” on Amazon you end up looking at orange pj sets and some hip-hop track suits with satin trim. It’s enough to give one the vapours, whatever they are.
Now, the vest thing I understand. Try wrestling a willful five-year-old into the sausage-casing sleeves of a suit jacket and tell me that vests aren’t a good thing. Indeed, I’m going out on a limb here and saying that, for small boys, vests are an acceptable substitute for suit jackets. This special exemption ends when the child is old enough to learn cursive and/or l33t. In the meantime, may we suggest:
December 19th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
You know, I’m all about quality, but since kids grow out of their clothes so quickly, may I suggest Target? They actually have some really cute formal clothes for boys and girls.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Ah! Aha! and now the cultural limitations of Canuckistan are exposed, for lo, raincoaster has never seen a Target (is pronounced “Tar-jhay” yes?) with her own eyes. As far as I know, all Americans shop at Sears or Nordstrom’s, except in Hollywood, where everyone shops at Kitson.
I shall check out this Target of which you speak. We are all for superfantastic on a budget!
December 19th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
It’s so true that boys get short shrift when it comes to nice clothes. I know that my five year old would not wear a suit jacket willingly, so vests are a nice compromise.
However, little girls in party dresses are the cutest things.
As far as Target goes, I love Target, but I just can’t get behind their clothes for kids. It could be just me.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Actually, the best special-occasion boy’s clothes come from Chinatown, but it’s not every five-year-old who can pull of the scarlet brocade with dragon embroidery and matching hat look. Still: cute!
December 19th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Well, as an employee of Pacific Northwest Ballet, I have to agree with you that it is great fun to watch all the kids dressed to the nines in our lobby at every show! (At today’s matinee there was a little girl - couldn’t have been more than four - in a huge princess outfit, including tiara!) But you need to check out more performances than the one you did - We get plenty of boys snappily decked out in fine attire as well. Yes, vests rule the wardrobe as the fancy-duds-choice for male tots.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
If I had the budget to take the speedy train down to Seattle for a show, you’d be sure of seeing me; what are the dates for this year’s Nutcracker?
December 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Having only had one male child, I truly missed the “dressing up” phase of childhood. The closest I was able to get was an impeccably tailored red wool blazer with brass buttons that someone sent me from London when he was 2. However I now take great pleasure in buying clothes at Christmas for my daughter-in-law. Last Thanksgiving when she was pregnant, I remember speculating on the baby’s gender and hoping it would be a girl so I (we, my sisters have also taken posession of the child :-)) could dress her in amazing silk taffeta dresses & black patent Mary Janes and take her to the nutcracker in NYC and then to tea. Thankfully my wish has been granted. Now don’t get me wrong. I love my son more than I love my luggage, but dressing boys is just no where near as much fun as dressing girls.
December 20th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Agreed, but you know the temptation to add just one more accessory, just one more layer of petticoats must also be resisted, however strong it may be: I’ve seen a lot of little girls that look like boudoir lampshades. Which is a whole nother blog post, come to think of it.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
[...] those of you who have no idea what we were on about yesterday, here is the Anaheim Ballet’s video of the highlights of the Nutcracker in just under ten [...]