Orlando Ballet bets big on new $3.6 million ‘Nutcracker’
When Orlando Ballet opens its new $3.6 million production of “The Nutcracker” on Friday, the goal will be to entertain the patrons — many of whom, if tradition holds, will be first-time ballet-goers. But beyond creating holiday memories of the Sugar Plum Fairy for Central Floridians, there’s a lot riding on that expenditure — an enormous sum for a local production.
“This is a huge investment. Absolutely,” said executive director Cheryl Collins. “It’s got to be a colossal show and hold its weight for a significant number of years.”
The new “Nutcracker” represents a notable milestone for the ballet, which has seen its finances steadily rebound since a 2015 cash crisis nearly shut the organization down.
“It is the first time that Orlando Ballet has been in a position to build an entirely new production from the ground up,” Collins said.
The company’s previous “Nutcracker,” though it has been refreshed here and there over the years, debuted more than three decades ago. Its props and scenic elements have now been sold to a dance school in Colorado — where it will be new — with proceeds helping fund the world premiere production.
Building a production from scratch is time-consuming and expensive, “which is why you don’t see companies doing a whole lot of them all the time,” Collins said. But when you do, you build them to last. Collins is planning on this “Nutcracker” to be around for at least 20 years.
The reward for the initial investment, especially for a popular title like “The Nutcracker,” can be significant. You would be hard-pressed to find any U.S. ballet company that doesn’t use proceeds from an annual “Nutcracker” production to substantially fund the rest of its season.
For this year’s show, which has 14 performances in the Dr. Phillips Center’s Steinmetz Hall, Orlando
Ballet has set a ticket sales goal of $1.75 million. That’s not unrealistic: Last year’s performances brought in ticket revenue of $1.4 million, Collins said.
There’s also a payoff in developing future generations of ballet fans in the youngsters who attend.
“That’s very important. You have to light the torch,” Collins said. “It is worth [the investment] because of the family traditions that form around ‘The Nutcracker.’ They will come back year after year.”
The new production, created by artistic director Jorden Morris, was part of a long-range plan adopted by Orlando Ballet in 2017.
“It was the last check box we hadn’t completed,” Collins said.
Not that anyone was procrastinating.
Morris has been working on the project since 2020, a grand undertaking involving new choreography, designing and building new sets and costumes, and adding visual elements such as aerial sequences and the Cyr wheel — an acrobatic apparatus in which performers use strength and grace to balance themselves and move inside a giant hoop.
When a Sentinel reporter stops by to talk with Morris, he is knee-deep in spreadsheets trying to match dancers with the 75-ish “Nutcracker” roles across weeks of performances.
“This is my ‘Nutcracker’ hell at the moment,” he says with the smile of someone who has been enmeshed in a project for years but finally sees the Christmas lights at the end of the tunnel.
Morris felt the pressure during the creative process — partly because of COVID-19 problems, such as supply-chain issues on set construction and delivery — but also because of the show’s significance.
“It’s one of the most famous stories in the ballet world; it does so much for the art form; it’s the start of so many people’s careers,” he said. “It’s quite nerve-racking to remake a tradition. It’s a huge weight on my shoulders.”
He settled on a snowglobe theme for Orlando Ballet’s “Nutcracker” because he had liked the trinkets as a child. But he considered every element of the production — even the key characters of Clara and Drosselmeyer, the little girl at the story’s heart and the mysterious man who gives her a magical nutcracker.
In American productions, Clara often spends the second act watching others dance. Morris thought she should be more proactive.
“I wanted to make sure her character grew through the whole ballet,” he said.
And Drosselmeyer, often played somewhere between creepy and threatening, also comes in for a personality tweak: “He’s like Geppetto,” the kindly woodcarver who creates Pinocchio, Morris says of his vision. “He’s not weird, he’s not creepy, he’s the magic of Christmas, the magic of a child’s imagination.”
One major update came to the famed Act 2 dances named for various cultures: the “Arabian Dance,” “Chinese Dance” and others. In recent years, critics have derided the traditional choreography as stereotypical or racist.
“I think the intentions were good in the beginning, but now it’s actually insulting,” said Morris of the choreography, which dates back to more than a century ago. “We’ve allowed it to perpetuate way past its due date. It is overdue to be retired.”
In the new version, for example, a performer costumed as a Chinese heron will dance to Tchaikovsky’s “Chinese Dance” music, as a representation of “the energy of the culture,” Morris said.
The “Arabian Dance” performer will be in the Cyr wheel as Morris dumps the image of women in harem pants doing “a sexy dance for the dads” — a description he has heard used in the ballet world. Ballerinas have been training on the apparatus since April, he said, but in the future, he envisions the role as unisex. Instead of “desert princess,” “it could be a desert prince one night,” he said.
The undertaking was so mammoth, costume production had to be spread out among 14 shops. Some sets were created in Cardiff, Wales, trucked to Liverpool, England, and then shipped to the U.S. Others were designed in Seattle and transported across the country.
Morris — who sometimes feels like a logistics manager — has been assisted by Pittsburgh-based award-winning theater, opera and ballet designer Robert Perdziola along with local ballet staff members, including assistant artistic director Lisa Thorn Morris and rehearsal director Heath Gill.
The ballet found the money for its world-premiere “Nutcracker” in part because it had been saving in a fund established to develop new productions, Collins said. Although other organizations had to raid similar funds during the COVID-19 shutdown, the ballet was fortunate in that it kept performing in a limited way and received a federal Paycheck Protection Program grant to keep operating.
Sponsors have also jumped on board, including Massey Services, Dr. Phillips Charities and Orlando Health.
Collins says the production already has started to raise the company’s profile as dancers hear about the work in progress and become more interested in coming to Orlando. A representative of the Kennedy Center outside Washington, D.C., will view the production, she said, meaning it could end up onstage in the nation’s capital next year.
And company leaders are already wondering if it would be possible to take the show on the road to other Florida cities in the future.
Morris shares Collins’ confidence that the result will be worth the effort.
“It’s been a lot of sleepless nights,” said Morris. “But this production is going to outlast my time in this field.”
Added Collins: “We feel like this is going to have the quality to compete with any ‘Nutcracker’ anyone’s ever seen.”