The South Bank Show - The Nutcracker
Wednesday 26 December 2007 11:15pm - 12:15am on ITV1.

The South Bank Show pays homage to one of the world’s favourite fairy tales: The Nutcracker. Margy Kinmonth’s film examines this famous rites of passage story and asks what it is about Tchaikovsky’s ballet that has made it such an essential part of every child’s Christmas all over the world.

Why has this classic story of growing up, set to music and performed, inspired so many artists over the decades? Nutcracker wasn’t always a light and fluffy sweet-filled ballet for children. It started as one of Hoffman’s dark fairy tales, long before Tchaikovsky created the music for the famous ballet, now the archetypal child’s Christmas entertainment.

Tchaikovsky found it hard to write Nutcracker, struggling with his own demons – drink, his sexuality – before his untimely and mysterious death soon after the premiere. The film examines this paradox in his creation of the Nutcracker and we travel to Russia to the Mariinsky Theatre where the ballet was first performed in 1892. It then virtually disappeared, unperformed for nearly half a century in Russia, before the Americans took it to their hearts after the war.

The South Bank Show has an exclusive sneak preview on the film set of legendary Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, whose $80m blockbuster movie version Nutcracker - The True Story will be released in late 2008. It stars Nathan Lane and child star Elle Fanning.

The film also features key excerpts of Nutcracker performed by principal dancers of the Royal Ballet, and the Mariinsky Theatre, and also rare archive ballet footage. Contributors include: conductor Valery Gergiev, director Sir Peter Wright, choreographer Peter Schaufuss, director Ken Russell, choreographer Matthew Bourne, writer Marina Warner, and Tchaikovsky biographer Anthony Holden