Nutcracker returns this weekend
Like assembling an elite sports team, a dance company’s depth is a big difference-maker when the audience is watching.
There is not one experienced Prince in The Nutcracker fold this year, there are two and there is also a pair of strong male supporting dancers.
One ballerino is the bridge between those two positions. Kieran Yip had the lead role of the Prince the last time Judy Russell’s Enchainement Dance Centre produced the classic Christmas show.
That was 2015. Yip is back again this year but is applying his skills to a number of the critical backup roles.
Joining him in that set of credits is Steve Buchanan, another young veteran (he played the Cavalier in the 2015 version). They will share the workload for characters like the Mouse King and the Snow King, plus slot into challenging ensemble scenes like the Spanish interlude and Russian interlude.
Their leadership will be counted on.
Handling the position of this year’s male lead, the Prince, is someone new to the role in a Prince George context. He comes from the professional ranks but is also familiar to the local dance scene. Owen Selkirk has worked with Russell before in musical theatre productions, but the last time was 2012’s hit comedy The Producers.
Selkirk is coming back from living elsewhere playing the ballet trade and he is coming back from injury. Before his two-year recovery stint he worked with professional or semi-pro productions of The Nutcracker in Kelowna, Victoria, Richmond and other locations. It is one of the seminal ballets of the profession and he knows it well.
“The Cavalier is a fun part to play. You get to do that great pas de deux (a ballet duet), you get the same money, but you don’t have to have the same responsibilities as doing the Prince. It’s a big workload (being the Prince). There’s a lot of pressure,” he said, as much to the up-and-comers Yip and Buchanan as to the Citizen.
The two aspiring dancers get no such luxuries, since they have to whip costumes on and off backstage to cover multiple positions. Selkirk will focus on the Prince parts, some of which constitutes the most coveted choreography in all of balletdom, but in a way he has to learn it twice.
The Prince works primarily opposite the character of Clara, the show’s true protagonist. It is a common practice for dance companies to split up the workload of Clara, alternating between a couple of ballerinas from night to night, like a baseball team rotating their starting pitchers. For this production it is shared between Kate McGowan, who has played Clara before, and Makenna Thiffault making her Clara debut.
“I’m used to that, but still, no two bodies are the same, even if they have had exactly the same training,” Selkirk said. “Even if they are the same weight and height, one will always be better at the lifts, or better at turns, everyone has their unique way of supporting their own weight. Each ballerina has her own particular characteristics. It is fun to figure that out, but it is part of the work involved to learn the conditions of each dancer, and adjust for that from night to night.”
He is partially stressed to bounce back off the disabled list straight into to a lead role, but also that acts as an energizing factor.
“I could barely walk, at some points, so to have the thing you love most taken away from you but then be able to come back to it is really inspiring and motivating,” Selkirk said.
“To come back straight into such a demanding role, something so exacting, has been quite a personal journey.”
Getting to do it on home stage with a director to whom he is accustomed and cast members he’s known for years helps shelter him from the comeback kinks.
The enchanted nutcracker turns into a prince and Selkirk does as well at Vanier Hall this week. Judy Russell’s production of The Nutcracker ballet happens on Friday (7:30 p.m.), Saturday (2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.) and Sunday (2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.).
Tickets are on sale now at Central Interior Tickets (buy in person at 3540 Opie Crescent or online at www.centralinteriortickets.com or at the door while supplies last.