Wednesday, December 13

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Another departure from the leadership of Cleveland Ballet.

 

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In the middle of an investigation into alleged body size discrimination, toxic workplace behavior, and plagiarism, another member of the Cleveland Ballet's leadership has stepped down ahead of the company's premiere of "The Nutcracker" at Playhouse Square.

 

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Kansas Ballet presents its Nutcracker.

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The Kansas Ballet gave a matinee performance for its Nutcracker Ballet Wednesday morning at the Topeka Performing Arts Center. Over 1,500 Elementary school kids around the area were invited to the early show as part of the School Time Theater Series.

 

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A look at Chicago productions of Nutcracker this season.
 

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There was a 47% increase in attendance during winter activities in the last quarter of 2022 comparison 2021, according to the 2022 data reports by the Chicago Loop Alliance. The Joffrey Ballet’s “Nutcracker” has remained one of the top contenders for annual show attendance, but the alliance says there’s another way to increase those numbers this frigid holiday season. 

“Change the normal audiences for these holiday shows,” says Ariella Gibson with the Chicago Loop Alliance. “There’s no harm in appealing to more diverse audiences. That could be done through new renditions of the holiday classics.”

 

 

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A review of Houston Ballet's Nutcracker by Carla Escoda for Bachtrack.

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They say everything is bigger in Texas and when it comes to Nutcracker they would not be wrong. The current Houston Ballet production, choreographed by artistic director Stanton Welch and reputed to have cost $5 million, features 223 characters and is bursting with visual treats, hijinks and physical comedy. It is also bursting with ballet: torrents of beautiful classical movement unmarred by the hokey caricatures that blight so many modern-day productions. Even minor characters show off gargouillades and Italian fouettés – the vocabulary of the academy bringing order and clarity to the jubilant chaos.

 

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 Santa Barbara Festival Ballet presents its Nutcracker.

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This year the featured guest artists were Misa Kuranaga and Esteban Hernandez of the San Francisco Ballet as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Sugar Plum Cavalier, and Alexandra Hutchinson and Kouadio Davis as the Snow Queen and Snow Queen Cavalier and Arabian dancers.

 

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A review of Paris Opera Ballet by Laura Cappelle in The Financial Times.

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It may take a little while still for the company to settle into 1991’s Petite Mort, arguably Kylián’s most popular work worldwide. Léonore Baulac and Alexandre Boccara got its mix of sensuality and minute precision right, but others looked somewhat tense, not least because of the unruly rapiers the men wield at the start. The Paris audience was unsure whether to laugh at Petite Mort’s companion piece, the eccentric Sechs Tänze, with its vaudeville-style take on 18th-century wigs and gowns.

 

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Adam McKinney is interviewed in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.

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McKinney started taking classes at Milwaukee Ballet School & Academy when he was still in high school. “I was introduced to dance by a Milwaukee dancer, who’s also Jewish, her name is Pam Kriger, who suggested that I take a ballet class,” he said. “I realized that I was good at it, given the fact that I was an athlete and a musician, and ballet, as many of us know, is the beautiful and perfect amalgamation of aesthetics and athletics.”  

McKinney arrived in Pittsburgh in March as the artistic director of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. It is a non-performing position, although he does continue to dance elsewhere.  

 

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Ballet San Angelo presents its Nutcracker.

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However, just as Ballet San Angelo has changed over the years, so too have their annual performances of “The Nutcracker.” One such change was a brief stint during which the performance replaced the live music provided by an orchestra with a prerecorded soundtrack. The orchestra will soon return in 2020 though, and it’s a good thing — this year’s performance will feature a never-before-used piece of music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the composer of “The Nutcracker,” that was omitted before the ballet’s 1892 premiere.

 

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A photo gallery of Orlando Ballet's Nutcracker.

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Amir Dodarkhojayev as the Nutcracker Prince (left) and Ellie Iannotti as Clara and in Orlando Ballet's brand new production of “The Nutcracker” in Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillps Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, Fla., Friday, Dec. 8, 2023.