Clara and Barbie: Sisters in Charms

That was the year Mattel launched its first ballerina Barbie kitted out in a simple white powder-puff tutu with detachable slippers. Her accessories included leotard and stockings, and a miniature placard announcing her as Sugar Plum Fairy in “NUTCRACKER SUITE”. More Barbie ballerinas quickly followed – including more Sugar Plum Fairies – and what began with a reference to Tchaikovsky’s music has become a battery of Kens and Barbies sporting Nutcracker costumes and identities.

Mattel’s fair shapeshifter made The Nutcracker truly her own in 2001, however, when the ballet was chosen as the vehicle for Barbie’s great leap from toybox to the silver screen. Barbie in the Nutcracker, Mattel’s first CGI-animated movie, recast the ballet as a fairy-filled adventure, in which Barbie-as-Clara and her eponymous wooden companion journey to save the kingdom of Parthenia from the evil Rat King. The New York City Ballet supplied movement modelling and choreography – and Mattel duly returned the favour in plastic form. While the movie was in development, Mattel began a limited edition ‘Classic Ballet Series’ of Barbies, which subtly alluded to New York City Ballet’s own much-loved version of the ballet. Four of the eight dolls; Snowflake, Flower Ballerina, Marzipan and Peppermint Candy Cane are characters in the company’s 1954 The Nutcracker by George Balanchine. The other dolls included two Swan Lake Barbies, in addition to a Juliet Barbie and a Titania Barbie, inspired by ballet adaptions of Shakespeare’s plays.

New York City Ballet hasn’t been alone in benefiting from this heady cross-pollination between cultural icons. Throughout the decades, ballet companies that perform The Nutcracker continue to enjoy the interdependent relationship with the children’s toy.

Where there are Barbie ballerinas, there are Barbie-owning families ready to steer their wide-eyed progeny through the theatre’s doors for a treat of magic and nostalgia. In Barbie and the Nutcracker, Clara wistfully hangs a ballerina decoration on the Christmas tree, remembering “Mother gave this to me the Christmas I saw my first ballet.” Perhaps it was this moment of cultural-meets-capitalist lore that the next generation of consumers were primed to be transmitters of tradition – because here we are, a quarter of a century later, and The Nutcracker remains as popular as ever.

Still, with Barbie punching above her weight as The Nutcracker propagandist, it’s only right that she’s occasionally returned the favour. In the current evocative production by The Australian Ballet, Clara receives her Nutcracker, but also cherishes a toy ballerina.

Like Barbie, the doll is symbolic of career aspiration: the career of ‘ballerina’ that Clara dreams herself achieving in the ballet’s second act. (Strictly speaking, most respectable nineteenth-century families would have clapped their daughters in irons at the very prospect.)

However, just as it was in the past, a suitable doll was on many a Christmas wish list. This year, as gifts are given, the clock strikes midnight and the Christmas tree expands, The Nutcracker hints there may be toy ballerinas filling stockings for decades yet to come.