Do the math. Ballet company + the month of December equals… Yup, The Nutcracker. For more
than 40 years, the dance adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fantasy has been a
staple of the year-end holiday scene, and in the past two decades, its
popularity has snowballed so that it’s all but impossible to find a city in
this country that doesn’t offer one production of the ballet during the twelfth
month, and in some cities — like Austin — two Nutcrackers is now the
norm. Come December, Americans want to hear that Tchaikovsky score, want to see
Clara and her jumbo-jawed hero trounce their whiskered foes and zip off for
that all-expenses-paid vacation to the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and ballet
companies are doing all they can to give it to as many of them as possible:
staging them in larger venues, adding performances, starting their runs in
November. Mr. Demand, meet Mr. Supply.
 Tommy Bourgeois’ costume design for a Spanish Dancer in the Ballet Austin production of The Nutcracker |
the Kingdom of the Sweets. Their Nutcrackers generate blizzards of
revenue which help keep them afloat the other 11 months of the year and help
subsidize their less familiar, often more adventurous work. Moreover, they
bring in massive crowds of people who might not otherwise set foot inside a
theatre when the ballet is en pointe. And if those folks like what they
see, they might be persuaded to come back and see something else by the
company, which ensures not only more revenue for the company but a future
audience for all ballet.
Still, these Nutcrackers do not come without a price. They’re terribly
demanding to produce, requiring platoons of dancers and musicians, elaborate
settings and costumes, and a sleighful of spectacle. In some cases, as with
Ballet Austin, the number of artists involved can top 200. Coordinating that
many people to do anything — say, walk and chew gum together — is a
considerable feat; coordinating that many to move or play or sing on cue (and
do it in an artful fashion) and to provide sets, costumes, lighting, and music
that foster feelings of wonder and drama, is akin to plotting the Creation.
Only, it costs money.
This year, Ballet Austin is particularly mindful of the cost and effort
involved in staging a Nutcracker. While the company has been in the
business of producing the December dance classic for more than 30 years, this
year the company has completely retooled its annual production, working up
entirely new sets and costumes, and adding much new choreography. Developing
this revamp has taken the company a full year and cost it approximately
$225,000.
According to Artistic Director Lambros Lambrou, creating a new Nutcracker
for Ballet Austin had become a bit of a necessity. The company had been
using the same production since the early Eighties, and its age was showing.
Until about three years ago, that production had held up very well, says
Lambrou, “but about that time it began to show real signs of wear.” The sets
were losing their luster, fabric was fraying; the show was crumbling beyond the
point of easy repair. So Lambrou and the ballet’s board moved to give their
Nutcracker a full-body makeover.
For Lambrou, who inherited his predecessors’ version when he arrived in 1989,
this meant at last being able to put his own creative stamp on the perennial
show. That was important, he says, because “it’s pretty hard to tell the story
with somebody else’s concept.” He enlisted the aid of two designers in whom he
felt great confidence: Richard Isackes, a set designer and head of design for
the UT Department of Theatre & Dance; and Tommy Bourgeois, a Dallas costume
designer with whom Lambrou had worked on the ballet’s 1994 production of Romeo
and Juliet.
 Tommy Bourgeois’ costume design for Herb Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker |
in terms of the number of outfits involved, it’s a huge strain: You have one
oversized Nutcracker, one big Rat King, a Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier,
two royals from the Land of Snow, three Mechanical Dolls, three Mints, four
members of the Silberhaus clan, eight tiny reindeer, nine exotic dancers from
four different countries, a dozen waltzing flowers, a dozen-and-a-half rats, a
couple dozen party guests, umpteen angels, mice, and snowflakes, and a bucket
of bonbons, plus a giant skirt to hide ’em in. It’s an army — literally, once
you add in the dozen or so toy soldiers.
Fortunately for Bourgeois, the job of designing a Nutcracker is one for which
he’s been preparing for some time. “This is the first one I’ve actually
designed for a company,” he admits, “but I’ve designed one in my mind for
years. You see different things and say, `Oh, store that away. That’ll be a
great piece to use some time.'” When Lambrou approached him about Ballet
Austin’s Nutcracker, Bourgeois was able to tap his reservoir of ideas and start
putting them together.
Late in 1995, the designers and Lambrou began discussing what the new
Nutcracker would look like. Their first step was deciding on a “take” on the
story. “There are a million different ways to do The Nutcracker,” Bourgeois
says. In recent years, adventurous variations on the traditional version have
been gaining ground, everything from Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut, set in
the Sixties, to Donald Byrd’s Harlem Nutcracker, with its
African-American slant, to our very own Greg Easley’s World War II era
Nutcracker in the Blitz. “You see all kinds of different readings now,”
says Lambrou. “And we played around with various ideas, like `Should we set it
in Texas?'” Bourgeois says, “At one point, we talked about doing a version set
in the Twenties, kind of an art deco period, which I think lends itself to some
really beautiful stage pictures. But I’m not sure that it would be the sort of
thing that people would want to see year after year. You try to find something
that’s different, but at the same time you try to keep enough tradition to it
that people will want to see it over and over.”
For Lambrou also, retaining a sense of tradition was important. “It’s nice to
see other people’s readings,” he says, “and those kinds of productions are all
well and good, but one of the things that impressed me as a kid the first time
I saw Swan Lake, the first time I saw Giselle, was a traditional rendering.
With The Nutcracker, I always try to remember that you have children coming to
the ballet for the first time.”
The designers settled on a “traditional” reading, but that still left them
options regarding the setting. Bourgeois notes that you can get a traditional
feel from the late 1800s, which is when most Nutcrackers are set, or you
can go for an earlier period. “I went to a period that I like a lot, the
Napoleonic period, and Lambros liked the idea,” he says. In terms of dress, it
offered “some neat military options for your Nutcracker and the dolls, and
elegant lines for the women’s gowns.” In terms of dance, it suited Lambrou’s
sensibility. “The Napoleonic period lends itself to certain modes of behavior,”
says Lambrou, “a classical style of movement, and that’s what I work in.”
From there, Bourgeois began designing the actual characters, beginning with
the ballet’s big fink, the Rat King. “He was the first thing to draw and the
easiest thing to draw,” says the designer. In Bourgeois’ vision, “he’s a little
bit bigger than life. He has three crowns that appear to be one crown.
Color-wise, he’s in the mossy greens, but he has a big red sash and gold
hanging on the ends. The epaulets to his coat make his shoulders look
especially big, but instead of stylish gold and black ones, he has these grungy
ones with batted material off the ends. So it looks kind of military but more
like what a rat would wear. I hope.”
Rat grunge notwithstanding, Bourgeois found much of his effort in designing
The Nutcracker was bound up in “trying to make the dancers look as elegant as
possible. The first act of this production is kind of an upper-society party,
so you try to make the elegance of that happen. It was kind of funny, when we
were building the first act, as we went along, we made the outfits more and
more elaborate. And we decided that these people had no poor relations. They
looked like some royal family getting together for a party. With some really
big rats.”
 Tommy Bourgeois’ costume design for Arabian Dancer in The Nutcracker |
considerations of building clothes to be danced in. As Lambrou puts it, “When
you see the designs, sometimes you say, `Great. But are they going to be able
to move in that?'” Think about the trouble you have just getting in and out of
the car in some of your clothes; try doing a few dozen turns, twists, and leaps
in them. It’s the designer’s job to take ease of mobility into account. And in
line with that, the designer has to consider the issue of durability. “You have
to find fabrics that are durable enough to last,” says Bourgeois. Some of the
nicer, more beautiful fabrics won’t hold up.” It’s no good producing a
breathtaking uniform for the Nutcracker if it can’t absorb the dancer’s sweat
or it rips every time he lifts his saber.
An invaluable ally to the designer in making his or her drawings workable in
practice is the fabric cutter. When Bourgeois accepted the Nutcracker
assignment, he knew exactly who he wanted. Joanne Boudreau had worked with
Bourgeois on the Ballet Austin Romeo and Juliet. “It was a fabulous
experience,” he recalls. To make sure she would be available, Bourgeois says,
“I called her six months before to book her.”
The actual construction of the costumes has been underway since July, and one
can only guess at the thousands of hours that have been involved in fitting,
cutting, sewing, and altering the production’s numerous outfits. But despite
all the sketches and swatches and stitches that the project has entailed,
Bourgeois doesn’t feel overloaded. “It was never really work,” he claims.
“People took a great interest in it. Many of them were able to go the extra
mile for it. That made it that much more of an exciting experience.”
As this new Nutcracker approaches its debut, its creators are unusually
enthusiastic. “It’s all come together,” Lambrou says with relish. “I can’t wait
for opening night. Usually, there’s a bit of apprehension that you feel before
opening, but not this time. It’s been fun.” Bourgeois is confident of the
audience’s approval. “I think,” he says, “that the product they’re going to get
is definitely worth it.”
The Nutcracker runs Dec 13-23 at the Bass Concert Hall on the UT
campus.
This article appears in December 13 • 1996 and December 13 • 1996 (Cover).