‘The Nutcracker’ returning to Palace Theatre — if COVID will let it
STAMFORD — In Europe, “The Nutcracker” is a year-round affair.
“It’s just one of many ballets, so it can pop up in June,” Connecticut Ballet Creative Director Brett Raphael said. “You can see ‘The Nutcracker’ performed as part of a repertoire in European national companies.”
After the last year of instability, Raphael is borderline ready to follow their lead. But alas, images of sugar plum fairies and twinkling snow don’t play as well among American audiences without the glamour of wintertime.
As with innumerable other ballet companies, COVID-19 forced his Stamford ensemble in 2020 to cancel its annual production of “The Nutcracker.” A year later, the Connecticut Ballet is teetering on a new precipice. The company plans to bring back its annual production, but another spate of infections could discourage audiences from ever making it to The Palace Theatre.
In Stamford and throughout the state, COVID-19 cases are up again, despite dipping during the fall.
While the number of new daily cases in Stamford is nowhere as high as last year, the seven-day average of infections has more than tripled since Oct. 26, the day former Mayor David Martin lifted the city’s second indoor mask mandate.
New Mayor Caroline Simmons — who was sworn in on Wednesday — urged vigilance among city residents Friday afternoon in response to the reported spike. Simmons strongly encouraged residents to wear masks while indoors and social distance when possible as preventative measures. But more than anything else, the mayor urged people to seek out the COVID vaccine and booster shots as soon as possible.
“We are imploring residents who have not yet received the vaccine for themselves or their children or need boosters to do so to minimize the risk of hospitalization or even death as a result of COVID-19,” Acting Director of Health Jody Bishop-Pullan said in a press release. “However, those who are vaccinated should still wear a face mask in public indoor spaces such as grocery and retail stores, building lobbies, and offices to combat the spread of the virus.”
For the dancers and staff at the Connecticut Ballet, the situation means that nothing is certain, even with two weeks left until the big show.
“All it’s gonna take is a little bit of a spread, and I’m afraid we may we may be facing just an avalanche of people running for the exit signs,” Raphael said.
Even before the local coronavirus situation began to escalate, he’d already plunged the cast and crew into an intensive testing system that will intensify as time goes on. As of right now, the Connecticut Ballet requires all its dancers to test negative weekly if they want to keep rehearsing for the big show.
By the time the final production comes, Raphael counted 175 people who must receive negative COVID-19 tests. “That includes the professional dancers, the guest artists, the union crew,” he started, “Everybody from the ballet ministers, the company teachers, our chaperons, our boutique manager.”
Masking presents another substantial challenge for Raphael’s cast. Backstage, cast and crew must cover their faces. But like anything involving COVID, it’s not that simple; Raphael has choreographed an entire routine just to make sure backstage stays safe.
Take “The Nutcracker’s” protagonist, Clara, as an example.
“Clara comes to this theater in her regular class mask,” Raphael said. “She has to go to makeup. She has to take off the mask, get fully made up and she has to put on a new mask to get her in the dressing room until it’s time to go on stage.”
When she goes on stage, that mask gets thrown away. Then, as she returns backstage for intermission, there’s a new mask. If a character has multiple entrances and exits, they must receive a new, disposable mask each time.
The procedure is so involved because of the long swaths of time dancers will spend on stage and maskless. In a way, Raphael wants to compensate for the health risks inherent in putting on a show, especially a show featuring so many children.
Kids typically pepper the stage during “The Nutcracker,” playing cute little mice or soldiers in celebratory garb. Some large productions cast hundreds.
In the promotional materials for the Connecticut Ballet’s production, tiny dancers wear pastel costumes and peek out from below the statuesque professionals.
The Connecticut Ballet has ordered upwards of 3,000 masks, including 500 children’s masks, to get them through four shows.
The final layer of risk comes from the audience. Raphael says that crowds for “The Nutcracker” tend to be family-oriented. As he put it: “Grandma doesn’t go to the ballet with her 33-year-old son-in-law. Grandma takes the grandchildren.”
Though the ballet company will require all ticketholders older than 12 to be fully vaccinated to attend, small children pose a risk. Children 5 to 11 only became eligible for the pediatric COVID vaccine in early November. By mid-December, few will be fully protected.
All this, for a show threatened once more by the virus.
The rising caseload and rapidly spreading omicron variant’s early impacts have caused consternation. People are weighing whether or not to tackle holiday travel plans. Though experts say this year’s situation is far different than it was last, the fears of what comes next certainly aren’t good for the Connecticut Ballet.
They aren’t good for the economy at large either.
“Uncertainty is never good for financial decision making, for investments — it’s never good,” Yale’s Dr. Howard Forman said. Forman studies the intersections of healthcare and the economy from a health policy perspective for the Yale School of Public Health.
When people don’t know where to set their economic expectations, they’re less willing to spend money, he said. And almost nothing introduces more uncertainty than yet another phase of the pandemic.
Yet, consumer data also suggests that Americans are spending more money than ever before, causing supply chain woes to and fro for goods. Numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest spending on items has increased more than 25 percent from January 2019 to August 2021. Spending on services is up too, but only by 7.15 percent, according to analysis from Business Insider.
That momentum bodes well for Raphael and his ballet center, and even more so because of the upcoming production’s economic significance.
“In a good year, ‘The Nutcracker’ can account for 20 to 40 percent of a ballet company’s annual revenues,” he said.
Plus, the pandemic made this year’s production especially costly for Raphael. He wrote in an email that the budget for testing alone surpassed $57,000. The company is also absorbing $5,500 in security costs to check vaccine cards for attendees on show days.
In the end, he hopes the stress will all be worth it. After each night’s performance, Raphael will hold meet-and-greets with the professional dancers. There, the children who usually pack into the audience will get a chance to meet a real ballerina in all her glory.