All I Want for Christmas...

I already know what I want for Christmas!  The 1986 NUTCRACKER MOVIE.  When I was really little, I used to watch our tv-recorded version over and over and over and over in our apartment, and then I'd dance around our living room to our nutcracker cassette tape.  It truly inspired all the years I took ballet/lyrical/jazz, and even gymnastics and drill team dance classes.  I really think it's the reason I LOVE classical music (the secret's out!!), and I'm not kidding; cry when I go to a ballet. 

With sets conceived by Maurice Sednak (who wrote "In the Night Kitchen" and "Where the Wild Things Are") it is unabashedly 80's-tastic with its gross overuse of pastels and too many velvet-y textures, but I think that's what makes it such a delightful, dreamy masterpiece.  It's waaay too under-rated, but this overly-sugary-almost-indulgent rendition of one of the most famous ballets of all time is very much my  favorite.

My breath still catches in my chest when I find a clip of the Prince and Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux on random websites (and yes, I'm always searching for them!).  Patricia Barker's technique is an outrageous combination of perfect technique and delicacy.  25 years later, it seems like ballet has become much more athletic and forceful and striking.  1986 was right in the peak of this explosion of soft colors and makeup and too many fabric flowers--and the result in the world of ballet was this smooth, delicate, sweeter technique.  I love it.  Even if it means the Nutcracker Prince himself is a slightly scrawny dude.. and has a creeper mustache... it's alright, I still get a crush on him when I watch him dance in this pas de deux.

Seriously!!  Crazy legit talent and grace!

(I won't make you look at his face up close...)

It's decided.  I shall buy it for myself for Christmas.  I may need to buy a VHS player as well.

Grateful for: My mum.

Quote of the day:
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway."
-Eleanor Roosevelt