The Nutcracker: Gender Stereotypes

Introduction

Every career comes with its own problems, and professional ballet is no exception. Dancers spend hours overusing their bodies, causing injury and injury prevention to be a significant issue facing the ballet world. Injuries and getting them frequently could even keep ballet dancers from getting a job as it can affect their ability to get cast in productions (Mattiussi et al., 2021). Additionally, there is an extreme amount of racism that has existed across the ballet community for years, which is finally beginning to be addressed. Older productions such as the “Nutcracker” feature portray other cultures in a racist manner. The “Nutcracker” in its original form used to depict Asian cultures rudely with extreme makeup and costuming

Discrimination affects the entire ballet community because it extremely limits who is allowed to be a part of the profession and can still force performers to feel they need to fit into a specific appearance. Performers can feel that they are not good enough because of the stereotypes over race, gender, sexuality, and their physical appearance (Samadani, 2022). All the stereotypes of ballet keep people from wanting to be a part of the ballet community which in turn keeps the ballet community from becoming more diverse. According to Phil Chan, a ballet dancer interviewed in for his work on eliminating ballet discrimination Samadani’s (2022) article “Reimagining race in ballet: Its past, present and future” as a ballet community, “We need younger, browner people involved in this art form, and racial caricature prevents younger brown people from appreciating the dance, because if all you see is the yellowface or the blackface, you‘re not looking at the incredible artistry,”. Additionally, if the ballet world had been more inclusive, productions of the past would have to be reworked today to remove discriminatory content. Beyond the ballet profession, discrimination is a big issue making it the biggest problem in ballet because discrimination in the outside world seeps into ballet and vice versa. Changes were made to the “Nutcracker” in response to anti-Asian hate that spiked during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Ballet was able to make an impact on racism by changing the tea scene demonstrating the importance of cultural equality (Hernández, 2021). Luckily, as discrimination gets eradicated from society it is disappearing from the ballet world. As stated by Phil Chan, in Hernández’s (2021) article, "Folks are finally connecting the dots between the idea that