<p>Each year around Christmas, American families flock to productions of George Balanchine&#8217;s &#8220;The Nutcracker.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s become a tradition for a reason. Pick any production around the country, and you know what you&#8217;ll get: glittering sets, exquisite dancing, and the dramatic strains of Tchaikovsky&#8217;s score.</p>
<p>But this year, Seattle families hoping to enjoy &#8220;The Nutcracker&#8221; may be shocked to see a male Sugar Plum Fairy pirouetting across the stage.</p>
<p>For the second year in a row, Pacific Northwest Ballet has cast Ashton Edwards in traditionally female roles in its Nutcracker production, The Daily Wire has learned. Edwards — a 21-year-old man who uses the pronouns &#8220;they/them&#8221; and identifies as &#8220;non-binary&#8221; — is on a mission to &#8220;un-gender&#8221; the very-structured, very feminine, world of ballet.</p>
<p>He has danced in the roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Harlequin, Green Tea Cricket, Candy Cane, and Dewdrop in Nutcracker productions in the past, <a href="https://www.pnb.org/artists/ashton-edwards/">according to the Pacific Northwest Ballet</a>. Edwards is &#8220;part of a rising generation of gender nonconforming dancers questioning ballet’s rigid gender roles,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/arts/dance/nonbinary-ballet-dancers-swan-lake.html">according to a 2022 New York Times profile.</a></p>
<p>“I definitely want to be an activist for the next generation, and I also want to be a light for them, to show them that it gets easier on the other side,” Edwards told the Times in 2022. That profile noted that ballet has &#8220;become synonymous&#8221; with a &#8220;fairy-tale ideal of femininity,&#8221;  pointing out that &#8220;gender roles have been enshrined in its technique, particularly with pointe shoes (women dance on pointe, men don’t) and partnering (women are lifted, men do the lifting).&#8221;</p>
<p>Edwards and others hope to change that.</p>
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<p>Pictures and videos reviewed by The Daily Wire show Edwards dancing in the Nutcracker during the 2023 Christmas season, dressed in feminine leotards and skirts, wearing a crown. He is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/arts/dance/ashton-edwards-nonbinary-ballet.html">known for dancing</a> in women&#8217;s roles <em>en pointe,</em> meaning on the very tips of his toes, a challenging technique that requires extensive practice and is usually performed by women.</p>
<p>&#8220;Until recently,&#8221; the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220601064234/https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/dance/slowly-more-men-are-dancing-on-pointe-including-in-seattle/">Seattle Times reports</a>, &#8220;the idea of a man dancing on pointe was a rarity, mostly restricted to comic effect in narrative ballets like Frederick Ashton’s &#8216;A Midsummer Night’s Dream&#8217; or the all-male dance comedy troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. In a world engaged in conversation about gender and inclusivity, however, things may be changing in ballet, just a bit.&#8221;</p>
<div id="attachment_836369" style="width: 2210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/male-ballerina-seeks-to-ungender-the-nutcracker-ballet-by-playing-female-roles/screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5-35-46-pm" rel="attachment wp-att-836369"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-836369" class="wp-image-836369 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM.png" alt="Screenshot, Instagram. " width="2200" height="1502" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM.png 2200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM-300x205.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM-844x576.png 844w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM-768x524.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM-1536x1049.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-30-at-5.35.46%E2%80%AFPM-2048x1398.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2200px) 100vw, 2200px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-836369" class="wp-caption-text">Screenshot, Instagram.</p></div>
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<p>The Pacific Northwest Ballet has not posted all of the dancer assignments for the Christmas season, but on Saturday, Edwards appears to have danced as &#8220;Harlequin&#8221; and &#8220;Green Tea Cricket,&#8221; a new addition to the ballet <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/arts/dance/nutcracker-asian-stereotypes-rethinking.html">intended</a> to &#8220;counter stereotypes of Chinese culture&#8221; and to dispel &#8220;anti-Asian hate.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Pacific Northwest Ballet did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter. Edwards also did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s request for comment.</p>
<p>Some of the pictures that Edwards has promoted on his social media show his 2022 &#8220;Sugar Plum Debut,&#8221; in which he is seen dressed in a purple tutu, dancing with a matching prince. The Sugar Plum Fairy&#8217;s dances in The Nutcracker are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/arts/dance/the-sugar-plum-fairy-an-enigma-wrapped-in-a-beautiful-dance.html">widely regarded</a> as the &#8220;pinnacles&#8221; of the renowned ballet, and the Sugar Plum Fairy is the queen of the Kingdom of Sweets.</p>
<p>The New York Times previously described Edwards as &#8220;an extraordinarily gifted and versatile performer&#8221; who is &#8220;setting an important precedent.&#8221; He is, according to the Times, &#8220;an artist assigned male at birth working routinely on pointe in a classical ballet company.&#8221;</p>
<p>Edwards reportedly convinced the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s artistic director Peter Boal to let him study &#8220;pointe&#8221; at the ballet school in August 2020 — a conversation that resulted in both the ballet school and the company removing gender designations from some classes and allowing students to train under the gender identity they align with.</p>
<p>“Sometimes you need a catalyst, and in this case that was Ashton,” Boal told the Times. “We’ve been going through our whole handbook to really ungender much of what we offer.”</p>

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Male Ballerina Seeks To ‘Ungender’ The Nutcracker Ballet By Playing Female Roles