As darkness settles over the
State Library of Victoria, an animation of light projects caricatures from the Christmas story titled the Nutcracker ballet.
Light Projection Show on the State Library of Victoria
The projected light show lasts for only a few minutes each night and runs until its final day, December 25th.
Opposite the SLV - from here is where the light comes from.
The Nutcracker is about a little girl who receives a toy soldier as a Christmas present, her brother becomes jealous and breaks the toy. As she falls asleep underneath the Christmas tree, the imagination that originally belonged to the mind of E.T.A. Hoffman comes alive.
Toy soldiers projected with light onto the State Library of Victoria
E.T.A.
Hoffman originally wrote the Christmas story titled
The Nutcracker which was published for adult audiences in 1816. He was the German barrister whose creative mind belonged to the genre today termed as the 'dark romantics'. According to
Dark Romanticism: The Ultimate Contradiction "
the Dark Romantics valued intuition and emotion over logic and reason and saw symbols, spiritual truths, and signs in nature and everyday events".
It was not long before the French author
Alexandre Dumas, famous for writing the Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, rewrote Hoffman's Nutcracker as a story-book for children.
But the Nutcracker today has become synonymous worldwide with the ballet.
The
Nutcracker first premiered in the Russian
Mariinsky Theatre in 1872 following the collaboration between two talented artists: Tchaikovsky, and the French born ballet dancer Marius
Petipa.
The State Library of Victoria first opened its doors to the public in 1856, during an era in which Tchaikovsky and the ballet choreographer Petipa began working on Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty,and the Nutcracker Ballet.
