Night is falling in the city. Holiday shoppers bustle down the sidewalk, some pausing to gaze at a colorful billboard publicizing the delights of an upcoming exposition. A few crafty rats scamper along a tall wooden fence, stalked by a sinister ratcatcher of the Dickensian mold. Children frolic, fight, and tease one another in front of the fence, the familiar syncopated strains of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker overture underscoring their exuberant street play. This is not, however, the early 1800s Germany of the upper-class Stahlbaum family. It's 1892 Chicago. In the Joffrey Ballet's 2016 production of The Nutcracker, the story of Clara Stahlbaum's innocent Christmas Eve dalliances with an anthropomorphic nutcracker and their journey to the Land of Sweets becomes the story of Marie, the daughter of a Polish immigrant single mother, whose fantasyland is the future Chicago World's Fair. Marie's mother, we learn, is a hired artist working on the fair's sculptures. Marie, Fritz, and their mother inhabit a wooden shack in the heart of the construction site, surrounded by the skeletal structures that will become the White City's buildings. Drosselmeyer is now “The Great Impresario,” a character of vision and magnetism inspired by the fair's Director of Works Daniel H. Burnham, and Marie's working-class mother transforms in the second act into the embodiment of the fair's golden Statue of the Republic, a less saccharine substitute for the Sugar Plum Fairy. The mutual affection of Mother and The Great Impresario spans both acts, and though the ballet leaves unclear the outcome of their budding romance, in it young Marie sees the promise of her American dream: a contented nuclear family.

中文翻译：

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壮观的工作：在世界哥伦比亚博览会展览会上作为娱乐的劳动

夜幕降临在城市。假日购物者在人行道上熙熙攘攘，有些人停下来凝视一个色彩缤纷的广告牌，宣传即将到来的博览会的乐趣。几只狡猾的老鼠沿着高高的木栅栏蹦蹦跳跳，被狄更斯模式的阴险捕鼠器跟踪。孩子们在栅栏前嬉戏、打架和戏弄，柴可夫斯基熟悉的切分音胡桃夹子序曲强调了他们旺盛的街头表演。然而，这不是 1800 年代早期的德国上流社会斯塔尔鲍姆家族。这是 1892 年的芝加哥。在乔佛里芭蕾舞团 2016 年的作品中胡桃夹子，克拉拉·斯塔尔鲍姆（Clara Stahlbaum）无辜的平安夜与拟人化的胡桃夹子调情以及他们前往糖果之国的旅程的故事变成了波兰移民单身母亲的女儿玛丽的故事，她的幻想世界是未来的芝加哥世界博览会。我们了解到，玛丽的母亲是一位受雇于艺博会雕塑的艺术家。玛丽、弗里茨和他们的母亲住在建筑工地中心的一个木棚屋里，周围是将成为白城建筑的骨架结构。Drosselmeyer 现在是“伟大的经理人”，一个富有远见和魅力的角色，其灵感来自展会的总监 Daniel H. Burnham，而玛丽的工人阶级母亲在第二幕中变成了展会金色共和国雕像的化身，糖梅仙子的糖精较少的替代品。母亲和伟大的经理人之间的相互感情跨越了两幕，尽管芭蕾并不清楚他们萌芽浪漫的结果，但年轻的玛丽在其中看到了她的美国梦的承诺：一个心满意足的核心家庭。