Gratitude Monday: a smashing dance

How is it that in all the years (this is the tenth) I’ve been posting Advent music I’ve never had anything from Nutcracker? Worldwide, the Tchaikovsky ballet competes only with productions of A Christmas Carol (and variants) for stage time during December. I don’t know how I missed it.

Nutcracker was pretty much the only cultural event I experienced as a child; every year my mother would take us to the performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and that was The Arts done for the year. And then I read E.T.A. Hoffman’s original in a German class.

Well, and of course there are those bits in Fantasia.

But my strongest connection now to the musical confection is hearing “The Russian Dance” as my sister Penny smashed ornaments in one of the activities of the Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar.

Every year, Lawson lets you vent your frustration and/or aggression on controlled destruction. Basically, you’re meant to “kill” three or more identical items lined up in a collection of items. Last year there were two varieties—Christmas ornaments and canapés or desserts. 

These games come with banger sound effects: smashing for the glass ornaments and slurping/crunching for the food. There’s background music, too, but that’s across all the games, not specific to the activity.

But back in the Olden Days, the music for smashing the ornaments was always “The Russian Dance”, and you had only a limited time to get as many as you could. (That time being the length of "The Russian Dance".) When I’d visit Penny for Christmas, I could look forward to her playing that game. (She had a profound hearing loss, so her computer volume would be cranked up to the max for these things. You could also hear her doing online jigsaw puzzles because of the “click” as pieces went into place.)

I shall never be able to disassociate that memory from this piece of music. But since it makes me happy, I am grateful to have it. And I think of Penny every single time I smash ornaments, which is an additional blessing to the satisfaction that comes from hearing those things in their death tinkle.

That’s my gratitude for today. And here’s the Cincinnati Ballet performing it. Volume up!

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