‘Nutcracker’ Set in Kalahari Desert

It’s danced to Tchaikovsky’s famous melody, but it’s not your traditional Christmas Nutcracker: South Africa’s Joburg Ballet has set the ballet in the Kalahari Desert among ancient Bushmen paintings.

The winter theme has been replaced with sun, sand and baobab trees. The role of the Sugar Plum Fairy is instead played by a sangoma, or traditional healer, and the famous Russian Dance is performed in overalls and gumboots.

Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere comes around midsummer so “trying to pretend that it’s winter outside is a little bit ridiculous,” said Dirk Badenhorst, CEO of the Joburg Ballet. “So the idea was to create a South African Nutcracker that would tell the normal story, but in a South African setting and in summer.”

The Nutcracker Re-Imagined was created in 2008 by the Joburg Ballet’s forerunner. It was performed September 19-27, 2014.

It is set in a magical world of South Africa’s sangomas, baobab trees, the gumboot dance — an invention of black miners — and would not be complete without koeksisters, a traditional local sweet treat. The 2014 version of the ballet added circus performances, with some characters traveling to a magical world suspended from ropes.

Kitty Phetla, a soloist at the Joburg Ballet, who played the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, which in this case is a sangoma, found the latest version
of the dance “more dangerous.”

“It’s more sculptured, rather than being classical; it’s exciting, it’s quick,” she said.

For several years, the Joburg Ballet, previously known as Mzansi Productions and South African Ballet Theatre, has tried to rebrand itself and reach out beyond its predominantly white audience.

“We are trying to sustain the existing audience but grow a very new South African audience, particularly a young and black and exciting audience,” Badenhorst said. This performance “is one of the ways we are trying to achieve that.”