Unique Updates of the Nutcracker Ballet
These 4 Dance Companies Revamp and Revitalize a Christmas Favorite
Olympic Performance Group (Seattle, WA)
Adding a Scott Fitzgerald touch, the Olympic Performance Group (OPG) invites audiences to a Nutcracker Ballet that features a Roaring Twenties party scene and a Waltz of the Flowers number that eschews traditional ballet and instead has dancers performing as Wildflowers in a lyrical modern number. The Russian dancers hit the stage performing pure hip-hop, the Arabian Queen has given herself a makeover a-la-Christina Aguilera style and performs as a genie in the bottle while, in the Land of Sweets, the Sugar Plum Fairy is now a flirtatious flapper girl known as 'Sweet Tart'.
Anthony Williams' Urban Nutcracker (Boston, MA)
On the opposite coast, the BalletRox dance company delivers a Nutcracker set up in modern-day Boston that takes E.T.A. Hoffman's Victorian-era tale and infuses it with a melding of ballet, hip-hop, rhythm tap and swing. Tony Williams, (founder of the Tony Williams Dance Center in Jamaica Plains, MA), felt, as a 25-year veteran of the classical ballet, that it needed to be revamped if it was to pique the interest of kids, teens and adults. Looking in his own backyard, he has dancers that stem from every ethnic background imaginable, and has structured scenes that dovetail with modern urban life. For example, Clara is now Clarice and her mother is a single working mom. The Snow scene is still an elegant number performed on pointe, while Waltz of the Flowers finds the flowers dancing to a score where Tchaikovsky is jazzed up with Duke Ellington.
A Brooklyn Nutcracker (Brooklyn, NY)
Since 1999, The Brooklyn Music School has put on an urbanized Nutcracker performance that plays out against The Big Apple's most famous landmarks. While the remake begins witih the typical holiday soiree, it deviates from the original when Clara is seperated from her mother at the Brooklyn Macy's. Caught up in the frenzy of holiday shoppers, Clara can only clutch her Nutcracker Doll as she tries to find her mother. In the meantime, she has an adventure that taps into the whimsical side of NYC, and Clara finds herself whisked through subways, visiting Wollman Sakting Rink and visiting diverse neighborhoods throughout the borough where she takes part in local traditions and discovers pockets of diverse culture.
Nashville Ballet (Nashville, TN)
Adding a decidedly southern touch is the Nashville Ballet company. Keeping the time period the same (1897), the company instead shifts locations to Tennessee, just as the state is gearing up for the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition World's Fair. The ballet takes full advantage of the lavish lengths the state went to while the world's eyes were on them, and using such landmarks as the pavilion made to look like the Parthenon (in honor of the fact that the city was known as 'The Athens of the South'), and using it as part of the backdrop.
The Nutcracker
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