Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) - Duke Ellington
The Nutcracker is apparently responsible for, in addition to banger rat dance tiktoks (links to Twitter instead of Tiktok because such is my distribution of vices), about 40% of the annual revenues of U.S. ballet companies. This 1960 jazz interpretation was composed by Duke Eliington and Billy Strayhorn and formed the basis of a 1996 ballet, The Harlem Nutcracker, which also transposes the plot from 1820s Germany to the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. I have not seen the Harlem Nutcracker, but I think I’ve seen The Nutcracker about as many times as I’ve seen any other ballet.
I sat in the Danish Royal Theatre, which hosts their national ballet, earlier this year:
The golden motto above the stage is “EI BLOT TIL LYST”, which translates to “not only for pleasure” or “not just for entertainment”.
I don’t mind being entertained, but I like the idea of a theatre that is trying to do more. Perhaps this more profound mission originates in the Royal Theatre, opened in 1748, being among the first state-sponsored theatres in Europe. Per an 1892 Harper’s Bazaar article, at the time the Danish Royal Theatre opened, most theatre was performed privately for the nobility or by travelling companies offering “either gross buffooneries or the bombastic and grotesque romances”. The article describes the audience at an 1892 performance:
From the point of view of London or Paris, it is distinctly a provincial public, homely in appearance and manners, and a little bit dowdy in attire, evening dress being a rare exception. But in point of animation and eager intelligence it yields to no audience as yet known to me.
I wonder the best way to watch ballet and listen to big-band jazz (and, also, less highbrow art, watching netflix and listening to k-pop) with animation and eager intelligence. Sure, I am writing about these songs, if indirectly. I listen to the songs over and over when writing these newsletters, and the text is a response to them, but it’s also a response to whatever I did over the past year, and reading old PDF articles pulls my attention away from the drums and the saxophones.
What are the things that bring you pleasure/entertainment/lyst, but not only that?
Thinking of pleasures that are not vices,
Tessa