Black girls and black casting in “The Nutcracker” - Black History Month in Dance, 2021

Black History Month In Dance 187. In November 2019, Charlotte Nebres became the first black dancer in the central role of Marie in New York City Ballet’s production or George Balanchine’s version of “The Nutcracker”. This reminds us how slowly things can change in terms of casting “The Nutcracker”, that central ballet, to show racial diversity. In 1958, Balanchine rearranged the Sugarplum adagio with four cavaliers, so that Arthur Mitchell, dancing Coffee, was one of four men partnering Diana Adams. (Mitchell liked to recall how Balanchine remarked “This is for Governor Faubus,” referring to the biggest source of racial controversy in America at that time.) In the 1970s, Balanchine sent Debra Austin on as second Snowflake. In the 1990s, Peter Martins sent on Aesha Ash as the first Snowflake.

Since Martins’s departure (November 2017), the process has accelerated. In November 30, 2019, I reported here on a cast that included several African Americans, notably eleven-year-old Nebres as Marie, aged eleven (pictured here for the “New York Times” by Heather Sten). There were two African Americans in the Tea trio, and Asian Americans as the Nutcracker Prince and other roles.

The following month, when Gia Kourlas in the “New York Times” profiled the four children playing the two lead roles for the 2019-2020 season, she was able to write that Nebres’s mother’s family is from Trinidad, her father’s from the Philippines). “The other young leads this season are Tanner Quirk (her Prince), who is half-Chinese; Sophia Thomopoulos (Marie), who is half-Korean, half-Greek; and Kai Misra-Stone (Sophia’s Prince), who is half-South Asian. (The children are always double cast.) City Ballet, which takes most of its members from the School of American Ballet, its affiliate, is also showing signs of change. Over the past seven years, 62 S.A.B. students have become City Ballet apprentices; of those, 21 identify as nonwhite or mixed; and of those, 12 refer to themselves as black; four of those are women. That carries weight: Since the 1970s, City Ballet has largely had only one black female dancer at a given time.”

Nebres, aged eleven, told Kourlas of how immensely important it had been, when she was six, to watch Misty Copeland: “I saw her perform and she was just so inspiring and so beautiful. When I saw someone who looked like me onstage, I thought, that’s amazing. She was representing me and all the people like me.”

Yet no African American has yet danced the Sugarplum Fairy or the Dewdrop at City Ballet. Very possibly, that might have happened in the “Nutcracker” season of 2020-2021 had it happened. Still, when you remember that the Royal Ballet presented two Dance Theatre of Harlem Sugar Plum couples back in 1990 and 1991, you sense how slow - how insular - City Ballet and other companies have been. There is much change ahead for us to observe when theatres reopen.

Sunday 28 February

Charlotte Nebres as Marie in the New York City Ballet production of “The Nutcracker”. Photograph: Heather Sten, “New York Times”