Ballet Lubbock’s five performances of The Nutcracker begin tomorrow evening. Nicholas Dragga, the group’s executive director, shares his take on this year’s show and its enduring popularity.
“I think the enduring quality of the Nutcracker is that in many ways it’s a tradition for so many generations because I think for kind of whole families units – it’s kind of my favorite thing, that we see a lot of grandmother, daughter, grand-daughter coming through the doors. And it is their holiday tradition that they get dressed up or they look forward to. It may not kick off the holiday season but it’s certainly not complete without the Nutcracker experience. I think that is what is most heartwarming to us is just to see the generations that come through the door. I think in many senses the Nutcracker is really a community affair. Not only do we have 175 cast members, but all the different businesses and community partners, and non-ballet students that are a part of it, either through sewing costumes, or helping us move everything to the Civic Center, to just our corporate sponsors, it really just becomes kind of like this community event. The best thing about it is that everybody kind of has their hands in it, either if it’s fitting tuxes, to playing in the orchestra, to help store the props off-site, it’s just fun and really gets everyone involved.”
“There’s a little bit of something for everybody in it. I mean it’s fanciful. The story is just really fantasy, and it’s a dream, a dream world. But things come to life. There’s a gorgeous party at the beginning and then there’s a 20-minute battle scene, which there’s fire and pyrotechnics and lights and great costumes and just real color. Really the imagination comes to life, so you get to visualize it. So I think visually it’s fantastic but also, the music stands the test of time, right? We often joke that what you’re really coming to see a concert. You hear a concert but there just so happens to be dancing on stage so we’re very fortunate to have just this beautiful score from Tchaikovsky performed live from live orchestra.”
“There’s about a week in January that we’re not thinking about Nutcracker. Believe it or not it is sort of a year-round thing. So we’re actually right now we are thinking of Nutcracker 2020. So we’re usually about two or three years out on the different costumes we want, because we hand make all our costumes and there’s 175 of them. And they take around 30 to 40 hours per costume. So it’s a lot of time, and the sets. So we kind of plan ahead on what we’re going to do in years to come. So that is months, years in advance. What most people think about is we start in September. We have auditions and practices, and rehearsals start sort of in the third week of September. And it then it just increases as we get closer to show time.”
“A majority of the cast is from the Ballet Lubbock school, or the Lubbock community. We’re fortunate to be able to bring in two guest artists a year for the role of Cavalier and the Sugar Plum Fairy. So those are kind of the lead male and female roles. We’ve had good fortune to be able to bring in world class dancers from New York City ballet and this year Lawrence Rines is a soloist with Boston Ballet, and we haven’t had anyone from Boston yet. And then Katrina Gould is our Sugar Plum Fairy. We have the good fortune of bring in professional dancers for those two roles.”
“I think that’s one of the best things about our Nutcracker, and all credit to Yvonne Racz Key, our artistic director, that it is very much the same story, and it’s that tradition each year. But she does change the choreography each year. So even if you’ve seen it for 10, 15, 20 years, there’s something different in it. The biggest chance you’ll see is that the festival scene, which is the opening scene of Act II, is completely reimagined. We’re bringing back the dragon from several years ago. There’s a dancing bear, and that’s going to be quite different from what you’ve seen in the past. It’s just a great fun show.”
For information, visit www.balletlubbock.org or call (806) 785-3090.