One of my friends here in Richmond grew up dancing ballet. She remains a marvelously skillful dancer, and since moving here she’s also been a regular attendee of the Richmond Ballet’s productions. I’ve been fortunate enough to tag along to a couple so far.

Each December, they put on The Nutcracker in the beautiful Carpenter Theater. Somehow, I had made it thirty years into my life without ever having experienced any version of this ballet. I knew it was full of classical bangers and dreamy dresses, and I’d seen the bouncing bouclé rat costumes of a few dancers on Instagram before, but I was otherwise unfamiliar with the plot outside of vague memories of a rat king singing “I’m the big cheese” over and over again in 1999’s direct-to-video The Nuttiest Nutcracker. Which, now that I’m looking into it, seems to have been a nut-centric Veggie Tales ripoff more than a Nutcracker story.

Anyway, all that’s to say I was going in pretty blind. My friend had only forewarned me that there was going to be an extended scene of a sort of “peoples of the world” presenting gifts and performances to the prince and princess-like characters, and that this was originally designed as a form of flattery to the then-Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. I am grateful she gave me this primer.

I was immediately on the edge of my seat when the practical effects began. If you happen to be reading this without having seen the show, please skip this paragraph. I am an absolute sucker for stage magic so I was losing my shit when I realized what was about to happen with the children’s dolls in Act 1.

The introduction of special effects like this had the unintended consequence of making me sick to my stomach when the toy nutcracker’s head popped off — I was scared it was foreshadowing. I couldn’t help but imagine the practical effect they might employ later on when the nutcracker became a human man and fought with the rat king. I began to fear a member of GWAR’s team was involved in the production. I am pleased, yet perhaps also a shade disappointed, to report there was no gruesome beheading of our hero in Act 2.

You know what was in Act 2? The best fucking ballet I have ever seen out of all of the two ballets I have ever seen. I feel like most people have at least heard the music to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, maybe the Waltz of the Flowers and probably the Overture too. But after the show, my first question to my friend was Why isn’t anyone talking about that freaking snake?! She told me it’s because it’s a Richmond-specific piece! God, I love this city.

On the Nutcracker Wikipedia page, this part of the show is called Coffee (Arabian Dance). I don’t know what it’s supposed to be in its original form, but the snake-and-snake-charmer piece that the Richmond Ballet puts on in its place is incredible. The acrobatics, the strength, the suavity is all off the charts. The rest of the world needs to get on this shit. During our performance, the Snake was played by Izabella Tokev. To her I say, damn girl, congratulations, and thank you.

I also was not expecting to see a stanky leg or the 6-7 wobble move that night, yet there they were, from our Russian bear, played that night by Alejandro Mariño Hechavarria.

There are, in my opinion, a couple of unsung heroes in this show, though. First, I could not stop thinking about whoever is holding up the bunny Mother Ginger, and how chaotic it must be under that hoop skirt with all those kids:

I checked our program, and the Guy Under The Dress¹ in our performance was played by Tristan Herschmann.

I noticed that the male ballerinas, in general, did not get as many opportunities to bow and accept applause, so for once in my life I just want to say, good job, men. I don’t know if the catching is as hard as the jumping, but either way, you all take those face-fulls of tutu like champs.

My friend had shared a funny anecdote from last year’s performance, where the stranger next to her asked which kid performer was hers, and then he was confused when she said none of them. This man could not understand why someone would attend this show if their kid wasn’t in it. It sounded ridiculous at the time, but I’ve come around to really appreciate that stranger who was there just for his kid that night. There was very obviously a dad in the audience during our show who was uncontrollably proud of his little ballerina, and wanted to make sure he or she could hear his cheers from the mezzanine while they ran around underneath the dragon:

Those little kids were working so hard, and they were so cute. I should have been cheering as loud as that dad.

Lastly, I just want to offer my condolences to whoever it was behind us in Orchestra Right who audibly dropped their entire bucket of popcorn at the beginning of Act 2. It was not quite as disruptive or funny as the Act 1 Fart in Orchestra Left during the big solo dance in Cinderella in February, but I was holding back laughter all the same, and for that I am sorry. I’m looking forward to whatever tragedy might befall my seat neighbors in 2026’s Giselle.

1. Not the official name of the role, sadly ↩︎