Wednesday, December 20

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A TV news feature on New Orleans Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker.

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Since opening last Friday, the city has been swept away with the ever changing, ever graceful production.

 

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A review of Oregon Ballet Theatre's Nutracker by Amy Leona Havin for Oregon ArtsWatch.

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This year’s rendition of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® shone as a bright success with newly appointed Artistic Director Dani Rowe at the helm. A former dancer with the Australian Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses, Rowe’s experience working closely with Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite, Mats Ek, and the San Francisco Ballet has already shown its impact on OBT’s 2023 successful season opener of Swan Lake. This year’s The Nutcracker was, overall, far more triumphant than those of the past — filled with a new sense of energy and magic that delivered the viewer a childlike wonder we often seek from the ballet.

 

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 Ballet Tucson presents its Nutcracker.

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Tucsonans will be able to see local dancers in "The Nutcracker" again this year. Ballet Tucson is putting on the performance at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

Organizers say ticket sales are slower than normal this year......

 

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Leanne Benjamin will be the new artistic director of the Queensland Ballet.

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Since retiring as a dancer she has been a coach, adjudicator and motivational speaker, and is presently Vice Chair of the Board of Governors for the Royal Ballet Companies. She wrote her autobiography, Built for Ballet, which reveals her determination and her intelligence.

 

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Joffrey dancers Anaís Bueno and José Pablo Castro talk about Nutcracker season.

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“I came full circle,” Castro said, because this character was his first leading role in the company.

“At the age of 14 when I arrived at [The Joffrey] I was one of the kids at the party [scene]. Now I am one of the main characters in the ballet. I remember when I arrived and was in rehearsals I thought I wanted to be the main character and be an example of hope for the children who study at the school,” he said.

 

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A story on the interplay between performers and the live orchestra in Ballet Arizona's Nutcracker.

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It wasn’t until joining Ballet Arizona five years ago that Demitra Bereveskos performed “The Nutcracker” to live music. Her “Nutcracker” debut was when she was 7, likely as an angel and little mouse, she said; by her first year in the Phoenix production, she was dancing in “Waltz of the Flowers.”

“I remember being on stage and hearing the opening harp, and I’d never heard a harp like that before and it just set up the entire dance for me,” Bereveskos said. “I was probably soaring the entire time just from hearing the notes plucked on that harp.”

 

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Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet will go on strike for three days this month.

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In June, the ballet corps went on strike over the same issue, which was not satisfyingly resolved, says [Matthieu] Botto. 

“Our demand was not really followed by the general management. They preferred to propose a reorganisation of the dancer's day, with more rehearsals, finishing one earlier in the day. But this was not at all the desire for ballet at its core,” he told RadioFrance.

 

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A look at adaptations and maladaptations of "The Nutcracker" by Hugh Morris in The New York Times.

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That potential, however, can be double-edged. Here are five instances in which light tweaks and heavy rewrites have reframed — and occasionally ruined — Tchaikovsky’s famous music.