"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (German: Nußknacker und Mausekönig) is a Christmas story by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann that has become an integral part of New Year and Christmas readings, plays and productions. Over 200 years later, the tale has been interpreted in theatre, animation and feature films.

While working on the production of The Nutcracker at the Mariinsky Theatre, Mikhail Chemiakin created around a thousand sketches, but it was important for him to understand how the characters' characters would be read on stage. While working on the stage space, wooden sculptures were made to replicate the silhouettes of the dancing actors.

In 2016, Mikhail Shemyakin produced a limited series of sculptures of ballet characters in contemporary fireclay. This material has a number of advantages over other sculptural materials - it is lightweight, highly durable, and also allows you to imitate any texture, which certainly expands the sculptor's technical capabilities. A total of 40 pieces ranging in size from 68 cm to 120 cm have been produced.

The Nutcracker ballet begins with preparations for the Christmas party. Butchers, cooks, cooks and cooks all bustle about in a burger kitchen laden with sausages, hams and other delicacies, all involved in the process of preparing a dinner party. The characters of the young assistant cooks, dressed in low white caps and red coats, neatly tied up with aprons, are sculpted in a series of silhouettes made of fibreglass - the first cook with a dish of whipped cream and the second, carrying a cat and a rabbit.

Mikhail Shemyakin departs from E.T.A. Hoffmann's text The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and in his ballet the mice are replaced by rats, often referred to as the calling card of the ballet. The artist creates a complete rat society, with aristocratic rats, military men, common folk and even the Cardinal Rat. In keeping with his spiritual dignity, the Cardinal is dressed in a purple cassock and cap, and in his hands he holds a book sacred to the rats, The Religion of Cheese. "In the "Flight of Mashenka and the Nutcracker" the rats from the procession, the drunkard rat and his assistant, the big rat, the sausage rat, the cheese rat and the sausage rat run towards Confitureburg, looking around with their hands full of sausages, cheese and other provisions stolen from the house of Councillor Stahlbaum.