The Nutcracker is a beloved Christmas event for the whole family. Perhaps less well-known is the fact that the original production of the work, involving such luminaries as Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa (who was probably the librettist), was a critical failure. The problem was that the story had none of the cohesion of E. T. A. Hoffmann's original. Events in the original ballet are simply left unexplained. As Riley puts it: "Certain parts of the libretto lack rationale. There

Ever wonder how the Nutcracker became, well, the Nutcracker? The answer comes from E. T. A. Hoffman's original version of the story "Nutcracker and Mouse King". In the original story, The Mouse Queen and her seven sons and all of their relatives consumed all of the King's bacon, causing him great grief. In anger, the King demanded that the royal clockmaker -- one Christian Elias Drosselmeier -- vanquish the mouse clan from the castle. Drosselmeier invented some very clever, t

The philosopher Linda Zagzebski has argued that there is an important connection between the things we care about in life and how we connect to them. Here is what she says: "We all care about a lot of things. Even if it were possible not to care about anything, we would not have a good life if we did not care. ... But if we care about anything, we must care about having true beliefs about [it]." To see her point, think about how strange it would be to find a person who claime

Many of you will know Brittany as a founding member of Borderlands Ballet Company and long time student at the Academy of Ballet. She originated the role of the femme fatale, Faye L'Amour, in the BBC's original one act ballet Cafe Noir. Since then, Brittany has moved on to pursue her career in the highly regarded dance program at Oklahoma City University. We thought everyone here might enjoy catching up with her. BBC: How is life in the OCU dance program? Brittany: OCU is suc