How PNB’s ‘Nutcracker’ has changed with the times

By Chris S. Nishiwaki
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Much of what today is considered classical ballet is grounded in 15th and 16th century European culture, some of it with colonial perspective and demeaning depictions of Asian culture.

Artists like Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin have created a movement to adapt much of the classic choreography for contemporary audiences. Dance companies such as Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) are taking note, and included updating choreography for their 2024 holiday traditional run of “The Nutcracker.” PNB is among the leading ballet companies around the world that are updating their programs to be more reflective of cultural identity.

“We look at what are the growing pains of these Euro-centric art forms as they become global,” said the Hong Kong-born and U.S.-trained Chan, who along with Pazcoguin founded Final Bow for Yellowface. “We explored how Asians are depicted in the arts, in vaudeville, radio television, and now video games. Chinese culture was not included other than being exotic or ‘othered.’ I can speak to the experience as Chinese, as a minority in the United States, and what that impact is.”

During the 2018 season, PNB switched from the Maurice Sendak version of “The Nutcracker” to the George Balanchine choreography. Sendak’s choreography of the Tea (Chinese Dance) featured a dancer in yellow face wearing a Fu Manchu mustache and rice paddy hat. The choreography also includes dancers using stereotypical pointy-finger movements.

When PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal adapted the Balanchine choreography, he eliminated all of the stereotypes, collaborating with the Balanchine Trust, as well as Pazcoguin and Chan, a long-time friend and some-time collaborator with Boal. 

Perhaps most significantly, Boal replaced the Chinese caricature with a character, a cricket, which in Chinese culture symbolizes good fortune, prosperity, and abundance.

Chan founded Final Bow for Yellowface with multiracial Filipina-Italian American Pazcoguin, a former New York City Ballet soloist. According to the Final Bow for Yellowface website, “Since 2017, almost every major American ballet company has signed the pledge, and Gina and Phil have advised performing arts groups on how to maintain the integrity of works from the classical Western canon while updating outdated representations of Asians.”

Chan also wrote “Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact.” He is the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He graduated from Carleton College where he studied Dance, Sociology, and Anthropology, and is an alumnus of the Ailey School in New York City. He has held fellowships with NYU, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and is currently a fellow at Harvard University, Drexel University, and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris.

“Instead of saying, ‘You, artistic director, are racist,’ I say we both love this and collaborate,” Chan explains. “Instead of, ‘You come to it, as the depiction of the character to be the butt of the joke,’ we tell a much richer and complex story. That is my approach. I think that’s why we have been successful at adapting choreography like that of ‘The Nutcracker.’”

“We are not angry,” he continued. “We have done our homework. That’s why my books are not super scholarly. If you read it, you can speak up to your high school teacher and say something. Choreography doesn’t have to be just one way. There’s no ballet police. There’s nobody that says that you have to do it this way or you go to jail. If you don’t change it, it becomes stagnant.”

In the 2024 PNB production of “The Nutcracker,” junior dancers such as apprentice Lucas Galvan, Corps de Ballet members Joh Morrill and Luca Anaya, Larry Lancaster, and Noah Martzall all danced the part of Cricket. Of the group, only Morrill was confirmed as identifying as Asian or Asian American. (Multiple requests for confirmation were not returned by PNB.)

Several Asian and Asian American company members danced other roles, including the male lead of Cavalier performed by soloists Christian Poppe and Christopher D’Ariano, both of whom identify as multiracial Asian American.

Japan-born Yuki Takahashi, a member of the Corps de Ballet, danced several roles during the ‘Nutcracker’ run, including the female lead of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

“The question is who is the best dancer to do that part,” Chan said. “The thinking that, ‘If I am a principal dancer, I am not doing that part,’ is outdated. The better way to do it is to think, ‘Who is the best dancer to do that choreography?’”

Chris can be reached at editor@nwasianweekly.com.