A Journey into the Enchanted World of "The Nutcracker"

In this evocative essay, Emre Aracı takes us on a journey from the bustle of Heathrow to the timeless charm of Richmond upon Thames, where the magic of Tchaikovsky’s "The Nutcracker" unfurls not only on the silver screen, but through the pages of memory and music history. Weaving together personal reminiscence, literary reflections on Tanpınar and Virginia Woolf, and the enduring legacy of Dame Ninette de Valois—founder of both British and Turkish ballet—Aracı conjures a winter reverie in which dreams and reality gracefully intertwine.

During the week we spent at Heathrow Airport, the sight of the single-decker red London bus, number 490, passing by our hotel door and bearing Richmond as its final destination came to feel like a standing invitation to that historic town by the banks of the Thames. The glittering decorations of the Christmas season dazzled our eyes like the silver sheen of a festive greeting card, and before long, we found ourselves in this picturesque corner of west London—where history and literature entwine amid verdant deer-strewn parks, Victorian lampposts, and a fine stone bridge dating from 1777, all of which continue to crown England’s pastoral aesthetic. To emerge from the roar of jet engines and suddenly step into what seemed a fairytale journey from another century was nothing short of a revelation.

"Richmond upon Thames - lampposts and a fine stone bridge dating from 1777" (© Emre ARACI)

True, I had visited Richmond many times before; indeed, I had wandered these narrow streets in quiet companionship with Virginia Woolf herself—guided, as it were, by the light of one of my favourite Turkish writers, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s own journals, he who had read her memoirs—or rather, her journal—and thus entered into an intimate literary dialogue across time. I found myself returning to Tuesday, 2 December 1958, a date preserved in Tanpınar’s journals, lovingly presented to us by İnci Enginün and Zeynep Kerman. “Yesterday morning, the light arrived like a ship sailing from a misty Bosphorus. The water seemed to swell with light. Now a wretched, rainy, leaden-grey, ash-grey sky. A grey sea. Everything is wet and doomed to die”, Tanpınar wrote on that day. And in the same passage, he observed Woolf’s account of the eclipse she had witnessed in Richmond—a vision that led her to liken herself to some primeval stone, placing her experience within the sweep of two and a half millennia. “Now I understand Orlando”, Tanpınar continued. “The style is unmistakable. She is absorbed in herself, chasing her pleasures” (Günlüklerin Işığında Tanpınar’la Baş Başa, Dergâh Yayınları, 2022, p. 127).

It was to Richmond in North Yorkshire, not the one by the Thames, that Virginia Woolf had travelled in 1927 to observe the solar eclipse—though, of course, she had also lived for many years in Richmond upon Thames. After all, this charming town had long been a place of refuge for her—a sanctuary in which her spirit found rest and her pen surrendered to its own enchantments. Hogarth House, where she settled in 1915 with her husband Leonard, became the birthplace of many of modernist literature’s defining works. 

Tanpınar, too, would come to Richmond in 1959, where he struck up a kind of quiet acquaintance with the deer and gazelles of the royal park.

“London’s effect on me,” Tanpınar would later write, “was like being on another star”. 

As we stood by the Thames, amid the swans and ducks with whom he, too, had once kept company, we looked out upon the rain-slicked arches of the historic bridge reflected in the water and found the same leaden-grey, ash-coloured sky he had described.

"The rain-slicked arches of the historic bridge reflected in the water" (photo © Emre ARACI)

Only moments before, quite by chance, we had wandered down a narrow street we did not know, and passed a small cinema—the Curzon—where a poster in the window caught our eye. It was for The Nutcracker ballet, and in the twinkling ornaments of its Christmas tree, we glimpsed the dreams of little Clara springing momentarily to life. A sudden warmth stirred within us, as though the gates of some magical world had quietly begun to open just nearby.

Tchaikovsky’s classic, brought to life anew each Christmas season, was here presented in the Royal Ballet’s production, choreographed by Sir Peter Wright in faithful homage to Lev Ivanov’s original staging. First performed in 1984, it had been filmed once again at Covent Garden in 2023, and, as in the previous year, was now gracing cinema screens across the country. The Curzon Cinema in Richmond—built on the site of the old New Royalty Cinema of 1914—had readily offered its screen for two showings, without hesitation. I had never seen a ballet in a cinema before, yet the allure of that poster, and the thought of returning to Richmond for The Nutcracker, made the experience immediately feel unique. The audience, too, seemed to rise to the occasion—arriving, as if for the opera, with glasses and champagne in hand—and with their spontaneous applause, transformed that white screen, for two brief hours, into the very stage of the Royal Opera House. That evening, our bodies may have remained in Richmond—but our spirits, like the great aircraft passing overhead towards Heathrow, had soared away with Clara and her Nutcracker Prince, deep into the Kingdom of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

The Nutcracker ballet, adapted by Père Alexandre Dumas from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, with a libretto prepared by Marius Petipa, was first performed on 18 December 1892 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. This classic ballet tells the story of Clara, who, on Christmas Eve, embarks upon an adventure that transcends time and space when her Nutcracker toy springs to life. 

In defeating the Mouse King, she breaks an enchantment and discovers with the young prince not only a magical love but the essence of true friendship.

Outside Russia, The Nutcracker was first performed in London at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 30 January 1934. The production was staged by Nikolai Sergeyev—former director of the Imperial Ballet—who had fled the Bolsheviks, bringing with him the notated scores and choreographies of the classical Russian tradition. His work formed the foundation for Ninette de Valois’s staging for the Vic-Wells Ballet, which would later evolve into the Royal Ballet. Thus, the performance we witnessed that evening on Richmond’s silver screen—with Sophie Allnatt as Clara and Leo Dixon as the Nutcracker—could trace its lineage back to the Mariinsky.

Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg (© Emre ARACI)

To behold Leo Dixon, one of the Royal Ballet’s young and gifted soloists, in the final moments of Act I—as the Christmas tree grew, as if by enchantment, and marked the threshold into the ballet’s dream realm—was to witness a career already beginning to shine like the star atop that very tree. 

As Tchaikovsky’s music slowly swelled in an ascending crescendo, and the magic took hold, we were reminded once more that, in such a sublime atmosphere where the boundary between reality and reverie begins to blur, there is nothing to do but surrender to the spellbinding power of art.

At the very moment Clara beheld before her a young and handsome prince, my own mind was cast back to memories of the many performances of The Nutcracker I had watched in my schooldays on the stage of Istanbul’s old Atatürk Cultural Centre. And unexpectedly, there was a subtle, organic link between those early Turkish productions and the London performance before us—for it was none other than Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, who had also played a foundational role in the establishment of ballet in Turkey.

The Turkish première of The Nutcracker during the 1968–1969 season (© Emre ARACI)

The Nutcracker first entered the repertoire of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet during the 1968–1969 season in Ankara. In my personal collection, I still possess an original programme booklet from those early performances—eight pages now wrinkled with water stains—yet the dedication of those who first brought the work to the Turkish stage remains vividly present. 

Among the images is a portrait of Ninette de Valois herself, lost in thought, pictured in profile wearing a triple strand of pearls; she is credited as “Artistic Adviser and General Organiser”.

Dame Ninette de Valois
(© Emre ARACI)

The production’s choreography, remaining faithful to Ivanov’s original, was undertaken by Richard Glasstone; the orchestra was conducted by Alan Abbott, with sets designed by Acar Başkut and costumes by Osman Şengezer. At the front of the booklet appears a detailed essay by Gültekin Oransay, in which he argues, with some insistence, that the ballet’s Turkish title ought to be Cevizkıran rather than Fındıkkıran. In that particular production, Clara was danced by Şadan Ergüler, while Ceyhun Özsoy appeared as the Nutcracker.

Following its première at the Mariinsky Theatre, The Nutcracker initially received mixed reviews. Critics found the narrative connections between scenes tenuous, and the prominent role given to children on stage was considered unconventional. When I attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Mariinsky one snowy February evening in 2010, I, too, was struck by the number of children present—though not on stage, but seated in the audience. Dressed in elegant evening attire, as if they had stepped through a time tunnel into Tsarist Russia, they seemed like natural extras, perfectly completing the imperial décor of that grand theatre with its gold leaf ornamentation and crystal chandeliers. It was a ballet within a ballet.

Emre Aracı outside the Mariinsky Theatre in snowy Saint Petersburg in February 2010

The silver screen in Richmond, meanwhile, offered its own enchantment: Julia Trevelyan Oman’s lovingly detailed sets and costumes—first designed in 1984 and strikingly reminiscent of Rex Whistler’s neoclassical aesthetic—evoked a lyrical beauty worthy of Tchaikovsky’s musical genius. This rare fusion, in which deep realism gave way seamlessly to immersive fantasy, succeeded in creating an atmosphere where the imagination could take flight. Like those colourful, three-dimensional children’s books where castles rise, trees unfurl, and flat pages transform into vivid tableaux, the Royal Ballet’s classic production unfolded before my eyes with the same sense of wonder, each scene like a page turned.

More than that, the work’s fidelity to tradition—presented with such sensitivity and attention to the finest detail, far removed from the wearying distortions of contemporary reinterpretations—brought me a profound sense of peace. “As Clara and the Nutcracker Prince journey to the Land of Sweets, they pass through the Land of Snow, where the Snow Queen, the Snow Prince, the Snowflakes and Fairies all dance for Clara. Upon reaching the Land of Sweets, they are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairies”. So reads the summary of Act II in the original programme booklet from the 1968–1969 season of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet. As I re-read those lines, I could not help but reflect on the debt Turkish ballet owes to “Madam” de Valois, and how her contributions must never be forgotten.

That evening, the flickering Christmas lights of Richmond sparkled like snowflakes across the darkened waters of the Thames. And that glittering river, winding its way through Richmond, also flowed past the modest three-storey house in Barnes where Dame Ninette de Valois lived between 1962 and 1982. 

During a long riverside walk two years ago, I chanced upon the commemorative plaque affixed to its façade—a moment I reflected on in my Andante article of August 2023. To recall that “Madam” had been living in that very house during the same years she was staging The Nutcracker in Ankara lent a deeper, more personal resonance to the experience of watching Tchaikovsky’s immortal ballet at the Curzon Cinema, as snowflakes whirled across the screen in their delicate choreography.

Home of Dame Ninette de Valois in  
Barnes, (photo © Emre ARACI)

De Valois’s own life spanned almost the entire lifetime of The Nutcracker itself. Born in Ireland on 6 June 1898, just six years after the ballet’s Mariinsky première, the future grande dame of ballet entered the world as Edris Stannus, later adopting the name Ninette de Valois. Her glittering career began with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and her legacy as founder of Turkish ballet marks her as a true artist who bridged centuries and cultures with quiet conviction.

As I leaf once more through the fragile programme booklet—its pages crinkled with water stains, bearing the touch of time and age, now almost my contemporary—I pause on the final lines of the synopsis: "After the farewell dance, Clara departs. At last we see her on her way home. She is eating sweets and playing with snowflakes. Was it all perhaps only a reverie…?".

These words recall to me a passage from Tanpınar’s journal, where he confesses: 

“I escape into reverie with frightening swiftness. I am always living a few months, even several years, ahead. If only I could dedicate to work the hours I spend dreaming”, (op. cit., p. 102). 

And yet—was it not precisely this capacity to escape into reverie that Tanpınar so well understood as the true ferment of creativity? Just like the dreamscapes revealed to us in The Nutcracker, those fleeting illusions that turn a cinema screen into a ballet stage, and a ballet stage into life itself—visions that may seem like fantasy, and yet are, in the deepest sense, nothing less than truth.

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Fındıkkıran balesinin sihirli dünyasına bir yolculuk’ in the February 2025 issue (No. 220) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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