Every Christmas, dancers and ballet enthusiasts around the world gather together for a production of The Nutcracker. The timeless stage production has brought us some of the most familiar and cherished sounds of the season through Tchaikovsky’s magnificent music. There is no other song, or dance, from The Nutcracker that more captures that imagination than that of ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.’ But what is the real story behind the ballet’s most enchanting character? The Sugar Plum Fairy only appears for a few brief moments on stage, but these are the moments the audience came to see.
Ironically, the Sugar Plum Fairy is not even found in the original E.T.A. Hoffman trippy fairytale Nutcracker and the Mouse King or in Alexandre Dumas’s The Tale of the Nutcracker. She was but a figment of Tchaikovsky’s imagination, and when she dances the pas de deux with her mysterious partner, we’re all so captivated that we don’t stop to wonder where these two characters came from.
As an author, my job is to go where the questions are and find the story, and this was a story that needed to be told. So wonder no more, dear readers, because all your questions are about to be answered, and when you’re finished reading, you’ll never watch The Nutcracker quite the same way again.
Cover design by Aleksandra Melnichuk
Genre: Fantasy
Ironically, the Sugar Plum Fairy is not even found in the original E.T.A. Hoffman trippy fairytale Nutcracker and the Mouse King or in Alexandre Dumas’s The Tale of the Nutcracker. She was but a figment of Tchaikovsky’s imagination, and when she dances the pas de deux with her mysterious partner, we’re all so captivated that we don’t stop to wonder where these two characters came from.
As an author, my job is to go where the questions are and find the story, and this was a story that needed to be told. So wonder no more, dear readers, because all your questions are about to be answered, and when you’re finished reading, you’ll never watch The Nutcracker quite the same way again.
Cover design by Aleksandra Melnichuk
Genre: Fantasy
Used availability for Kelli Stuart's The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy