Crafting a new ‘ The Nutcracker’ for the Joffrey Ballet
In 1987, when choreographer Robert Joffrey created his version of “The Nutcracker” for the Joffrey Ballet, he broke ground by moving the story from its traditional European backdrop to the home of an upper- class Victorian American family in New York, circa 1860, and incorporating everything from a Virginia reel- style dance for the adults at the Christmas eve party, to replicas of toys of the period. It was an “American” production for the company he always described as quintessentially American. ¶ Now, three decades later, if you ask the British- bred, Tony Award- winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon about the driving principal behind his new $ 4 million production of “The Nutcracker” for the Joffrey — which will have its world premiere Dec. 10 – 30 at the Auditorium Theatre — he explains it this way:
“Most “Nutcrackers” are about well- off children who already have a whole lot of toys and are about to get even more. I wanted to explore more complex storytelling — holding on to the Tchaikovsky score, which I love, and all the things that audiences expect to have happen in this ballet — from the magical growth of the tree, to the snow, to the battle between the mice and the soldiers. But I also wanted it to have a very specific Chicago story behind it, with a new romantic twist. And I wanted the central focus to be on how children — without the usual aristocratic manners, and without much in terms of material things — use their imagination.”
“‘ The Nutcracker,’ is not as much of a tradition in the U. K. as it is in the United States,” said Wheeldon, 43, who, nevertheless, saw his first production of the ballet at the age of seven, began studying ballet a year later, entered the Royal Ballet School at 11, and almost immediately played a little soldier and page boy in Sir Peter Wright’s production of the classic. ( He soon moved on to play the mischievous young brother, Fritz, and later, after joining the New York City Ballet, danced a number of different roles in George Balanchine’s version of the work.)
When Wheeldon and the Joffrey’s artistic director, Ashley Wheater ( another Royal Ballet alum), began discussing the company’s new “Nutcracker,” they grabbed hold of the idea of setting the ballet at the legendary Colombian Exposition — the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 that not only celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World, but put this city on the international map. They had both read Erik Larson’s 2003 bestseller, “The Devil in the White City,” and they sensed the Exposition (“minus the serial murderer,” as Wheeldon quipped), was exactly the right magical environment against which the ballet could be set, with the construction of the fair seen though a child’s eye. The fact that the Joffrey’s home stage, the landmark Auditorium Theatre, was completed in 1889, made the whole thing seem even more ideal. They proceeded to recruit set and costume designer Julian Crouch, who introduced Wheeldon to writer-illustrator Brian Selznick ( the Caldecott Medal Award- winning author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”), and they were off and running. “When I got the call from Chris I immediately panicked,” Selznick confessed. “I really had no relationship to the ballet aside from the parts of the music that are ingrained in everyone’s head, and the overall idea of it that is in our DNA. My first exposure to the work in any form was as an adult, when I saw ‘ The Hard Nut’ [ Mark Morris’ zany take on the story]. So I not only immediately bought a ticket to see Chris’ hit Broadway show, ‘ An American in Paris,’ but also went on to watch every version of ‘ The Nutcracker’ available online, and to read the original version of the story by E. T. A. Hoffmann.” “By the most remarkable coincidence, my husband is a historian who wrote a book about world’s fairs, and we have a collection of World’s Fair memorabilia,” Selznick explained. But there was a dilemma to solve: The fair ran from May 1 to Oct. 30, 1893, while the story had to unfold on a snowy Christmas eve.