Her name is Antonietta Dell’Era (1861-1945), and, as legend goes, in 1892 she was the first to dance to Tchaikovsky’s magical foray on the celesta as the Sugar Plum Fairy. That music the brilliant composer concocted to give aural evocation of “drops of water shooting from a fountain.” Ms. Dell’Era’s first performance received good reviews, if you discount one in which she was labeled “pudgy and unattractive.”
Well, we think she looks very smart costumed in something akin to street clothes. So we thought we’d provide a tour of the nine principal dancers of American Ballet Theatre who will dance in the Grand Pas de Deux of Alexei Ratmansky’s production of The Nutcracker, soon on view at Segerstrom Center of the Arts. Let’s see how these amazing female powerhouses look when NOT in Sugar Plum mode.
Isabella Boyton
ABT’s casting here:
To be clear, while many “Nutcracker” productions cast a separate role, “Sugar Plum Fairy,” ABT’s version incorporates the celesta music into the Grand Pas de Deux.
American Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker | Segerstrom Center for the Arts | opens Dec 12
In 2024, Los Angeles dance critic Debra Levine marks forty years of translating an ephemeral art form into the written word — in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Dance Magazine. It all started in Hong Kong at the South China Morning Post. Debra founded arts•meme in 2008.
