O holy Zeus, there is so much more to TCHAIKOVSKY/Nutcracker than my lifetime to now knew!1

[UTUSN]

I grew up with a vinyl disc of excerpts of the showstoppers in Nutcracker by ORMANDY or somebody and went on to full versions of most of the symphonies and what I thought was quite a lot of the oeuvre, to the point that I was able to identify the Symphony #5, which I didn't know at the time, as what it was and by whom on the radio by some of the idiosyncratic riffs.

I never went to the full Nutcracker and still haven't, but in the past couple of years have sampled it (listening not watching) on basic cable, and it's on right now, and some of the (much) music I have never heard before is totally mind-blowing.

I knew similar vinyl exerpted discs of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, all of course just sound, so when I saw the ONE ballet at the Seattle former world's fairgrounds, I was SHOCKED when the dancers rushed onto the stage making a CLATTER with their footgear!1 I was used to just the pure music...

[LiberalEsto]

1. Just wait till you dance some of it yourself

Back around 1977 or 1978, I was at a holiday party for the newsroom staff of a small daily paper in NJ. Around 2 a.m. one or two other people and I were well-oiled enough that we decided to try and dance as much of The Nutcracker as we could. And we did. Two of us were still dancing at sunrise. We didn't break any bones or furniture, fortunately.

Naturally, we weren't professional or even amateur dancers, though I did have a couple of years of ballet lessons as a little kid. So the quality of the dancing was, shall we say, dismal.

[UTUSN]

2. Bwah-hah!1 We music flirts are real pips, aren't we!1 I've had this year of recovering from a

fractured fibula and this was from STOMPING to a hot zinger of a tune on a jukebox, besides that I don't have any training in any moves, so I won't be dancing to Nutcracker or anything ever, but I "get" you, I really "get" you!1 I do some mean arm-waving, sometimes accompanied by bouncing!1