“I might not tell the orchestra about that until after we’ve finished recording.”
“OK. We understand.”
I’ve always wanted to be a conductor, especially of loud, nineteenth-century orchestral music and so when an email landed in my inbox recently from an American theatre company which began with the question “Would you and the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra be interested in recording the complete Nutcracker for our forthcoming production in Boston?”, it seemed clear to me that a part of my childhood was about to be requited.
“The biggest one is nine foot?”
“Yes, but that’s the exception. The other dildos are all within the normal range of expectation.”
“And you’re the Sugar Dish Fairy?”
“I am. Enchantée!”
“Delighted! A ‘sugar dish’ being..?”
“A lady’s sexual…bits.”
“I see. But this is still The Nutcracker, right?”
“Yes. Absolutely. It’s similar.”
“How similar?”
“We’re The Slutcracker.”
Vanessa White is Artistic Director of Sugar Coated Productions and the creative force behind The Slutcracker and its companion Babes in Boinkland. Although untimely injury curtailed her successful career as a ballerina, she has since become one of the leading figures in Boston’s vibrant Burlesque community.
“I was lying on the sofa, trying to think how I could adapt some of the great classics I had danced and loved as a ballerina, for the burlesque stage. I think the frustration of not working had switched my brain into creative overdrive.”
“You were stoned”, clarifies Slutcracker co-creator John Wentworth.
“Suddenly the word ‘Slutcracker’ came into my head and John said ‘You have to do it!’ ”
And so a seasonal institution was born. The Slutcracker first thrust itself upon Bostonians in 2008 and its cast of variegated sluts has since played to an audience of over 30,000.
Slutcracker incorporates burlesque and tango dancers, drag kings, hoopers, ballerinas, acrobats, and belly dancers in a retelling of Nutcracker from the point of view of a young woman experiencing a sexual awakening.
Like the best comedy or parody, however, Slutcracker is built on some serious technique and discipline. The score we’re recording in Brno needs to be edited and mastered ready for intensive rehearsals to begin in Boston in September, a full three months before the Christmas opening date.
It’s not all comedy or parody, however. The Arabian Dance (or “Coffee“), for example, is a gentle, psychological and sensuous study of desire. Veiled, blindfolded figures in flowing fabric tentatively explore the stage and the other dancers, constantly trying to find a way into each other before finally exiting in a state of unfulfilled arousal.
“When we started, we basically took anyone who was willing to go onstage. Now we have to turn away hundreds of really excellent dancers auditioning across all disciplines. And it’s not just different types of dance; we have all sorts of ages and body types too. There’s none of the physical uniformity of classical ballet. Yes, it’s about sex but it’s as much about inclusion as it is about shock.”
“So, would I get a part?”, is what I really want to know.
Vanessa gives a diplomatic answer which, if I had to paraphrase it in words of two letters or fewer, would be “no”.
John, rather more constructively I like to think, suggests that there could be a role created for “conductor with assless chaps”.
As recent conducting engagement offers go, it’s not at all bad.
During the recording sessions, John gallantly posts a picture of Vanessa moist eyed (“Good tears!”) while listening to the orchestra record Tchaikovsky. If ever we had any hesitation about putting our names to a pole-dancing, phallus-ridden, slutted-up retelling of Nutcracker (and, to be fair, I don’t think we really had…), it is gone.
These are people who care passionately about their production and about the music and these are the kind of people with whom we want to work.
“We did turn to you to sort out our music licensing and costs etc“, says John. “But more importantly, the decision to come and record here says that the show has grown up. We came to you vastly excited about getting our own music, to do what we want with, edit however we want, turn on its head if we choose. That is what I saw when I photographed Vanessa in tears: her baby was getting completed.”
Vanessa, John and their Sound Director Jimmy Rossi came to Brno to make their own recording of Nutcracker in order to escape the punitive cost of licensing an existing recording for their production. It’s a costly business but their instinct nevertheless is to support other productions of Nutcracker rather than to profit financially from their investment.
“The plan is to issue it under a Creative Commons License so that theatres and schools all over the country can use it for their own productions without having to pay huge fees to record labels.”
They also plan to issue what they call a “Grandma Nutcracker” version on CD.
“It’ll be a ‘vanilla’ version of Nutcracker, one that you’d be happy to give to your grandmother!”
Other things I have learned from these recording sessions are that “pasties” are nipple covers (which may or may not explain the rise in toplessness in Cornwall) and that Boston has a law against leading people to think you might be naked (which frustratingly spells yet further delay for the stateside debut of my flesh-coloured body stocking).
But what of the charge that perhaps it’s all a bit…well…disrepectful to Tchaikovsky?
“We like to think it’s what he would have wanted”, says Vanessa and given that Piotr Ilyich has to look really quite far over his shoulder to spot his nearest rival for the accolade of Most Sexually Repressed Composer in the History of Classical Music, there’s a large part of me that also likes to think she may be right.
The Slutcracker runs throughout December at the Somerville Theatre, MA. I, for one, plan to be there.
Sugar’s Daddy ….. a PROUD Dad