Friday, December 10

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Pictures from a ballet family's Nutcracker season.

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Louisville Ballet's Phillip Velinov, from left, and Natalia Ashikhmina have breakfast with their children Raphael Velinov and Gabriella Velinova, before taking them to school. The rigors of doing the ballet training for a production like The Nutcracker can be grueling when balancing it with life and the children's schedules, but it's practically part of the holiday tradition in their household. Dec. 2, 2021

 

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Berks Ballet Theatre presents its 45th Nutcracker.

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BBT Artistic Director Kelly Barber and ballet master and resident choreographer Nathan Bland co-choreographed the ballet with 21 company dancers and 23 students from Berks Ballet Theatre Conservatory of Dance.

 

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A podcast interview with Amanda Morgan.

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Rhythm & News interview with Amanda Morgan, a dancer with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company, about the current performance of the Nutcracker and navigating the Ballet industry during COVID. Interview by Chris B. Bennett.

 

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Festival Ballet Providence presents its Nutcracker.

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For more than a year, Kathleen Breen Combes, director of Festival Ballet Providence, and Yury Yanowsky, artistic curator, have been thinking all things “Nutcracker.”

 

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Sacramento Ballet presents its Nutcracker.

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Families were willing to comply with the extra safety measures for the chance to be a part of the performance.

“At least they're doing it and being able to perform and do the arts again. It's a very big deal,” Elder said. “It's really good for Sacramento.”

The Sacramento Ballet's "The Nutcracker" also features a live orchestra from Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera.

 

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An interview with James Gilmer of the Ailey company.

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Stuck at home, unable to perform, he did a lot of yoga, which he became devoted to while living in California. “To feel like my body was my own,” he said, “I really needed to center using that practice.”

But Gilmer’s first serious dance language was ballet. Somewhat unusually for an Ailey dancer, he had an impressive career before he arrived at the company. Classically trained from an early age — he studied in his hometown, at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater School — Gilmer spent six seasons with Cincinnati Ballet, where he attained the rank of soloist.

 

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 Ballet Northwest presents its Nutcracker.

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The company required that all dancers be either vaccinated or tested, and most — except some vaccinated ones in featured roles — will wear masks on stage. Some scenes were modified, too.

 

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Photo gallery of the National Ballet of Canada's Nutcracker.

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The National Ballet of Canada stages a dress rehearsal for its famed production of The Nutcracker on Thursday evening, ahead of opening night on Friday. Here, dancer Tirion Law as the Sugar Plum Fairy and principal dancer Siphesihle November as the Nutcracker perform during the dress rehearsal. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

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An interview with Justin Peck on creating the dances in the remake of "West Side Story" by Sarah L. Kaufman in The Washington Post.

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“Having this long-term experience of watching [Robbins’s] work onstage and then dancing inside his works helped me understand them in a methodical way,” Peck says. “Not like cramming for a project. It was over many years. And I suppose that led to this moment of taking on the daunting task of choreographing maybe one of the greatest pieces of dance theater of all time.