Tiered skirts in confectionary colors, an austere classical soundtrack, and predictably old-fashioned roles are the sugar plum visions that the Nutcracker conjures – but not at this performance. Caitlin Elledge, artistic director of Capital Contemporary Ballet and co-founder of the fledgling nonprofit ATX Artists for Social Impact, has imagined a different variation on the dance.
Their spin on the timeless ballet begins with the music. Elledge’s dancers will leap and twirl to Duke Ellington’s arrangement of the classical score, performed by ATX Jazz Orchestra and members of the Huston-Tillotson student band. Where Tchaikovsky’s original is stiff and precise, the jazz orchestra’s adaptation, retooled by Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn, leans into the genre’s long history of improvisation and collaboration. Fittingly, Elledge has also reimagined the setting of the iconic holiday dance, placing it in an underground jazz bar pulled out of the Sixties to recall spaces where inclusive and transgressive communities gather and find chosen family.
“It’s almost like a protest piece,” says Elledge. “Not only by Duke Ellington making Tchaikovsky’s music jazz and essentially that being a protest in itself – it’s also taking something that’s traditionally very binary and very gendered and very, usually, racist and not accessible, flipping it on its head, and making it the complete opposite.”
Elledge, a nonbinary dancer who has professionally performed and taught dance in many capacities over the past 13 years, hopes to demonstrate a possibility for elasticity in ballet’s traditional rigidity through their newly formed company and their original choreography.
“I want everyone to be able to learn the ballet technique in whatever way they can,” Elledge says, explaining that lessons are typically strictly gendered and learning skill sets across binary expectations can be daunting, even for experienced dancers. Of course, Elledge says, it just takes communication and patience. “You don’t have to be a child growing up in that technique in order to learn it. You can be a professional adult and be going through these transitions with yourself and suddenly learn how to do a million new things.”
Elledge’s Nutcracker choreography embraces a fusion of jazz-inspired moves and elevates other queer dancers as well, but their vision for this performance’s social impact doesn’t stop there. Partnering with Sofar Sounds, a for-profit performance platform centered on intimate concerts in unexpected places, ATX Artists for Social Impact will bring the one-night performance to Brazos Hall and donate a portion of the proceeds to Casa Marianella, a local refugee shelter and support organization.
Elledge and their partner, Paolo Dumancas, formed ATX Artists for Social Impact earlier this year as a hub for the efforts of their individual organizations, Capital Contemporary Ballet and ATX Jazz Orchestra, respectively, and a method to support community organizations through art. In addition to accessible lessons – Elledge teaches accommodation-friendly dance to individuals with autism and youth in foster care – and free jazz performances in underserved communities, the couple sees this holiday Nutcracker performance as the “kickoff” for more unique benefit events ahead in 2026.
ATX Artists for Social Impact and Sofar Sounds present Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker on Dec. 19 at Brazos Hall.
This article appears in December 19 • 2025.