By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Though The Nutcracker is a storied tradition for Lone Star Ballet, artistic director Vicki McLean said she still starts essentially from scratch each year.
"I love to tell stories with all of the ballets we do. I kind of begin with an empty canvas — the dance studio and the rehearsal hall," McLean said. "I start painting these moving pictures."
And in doing so this year, she's found a new way to freshen up the production.
LSB's The Nutcracker will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 and 6 p.m. Sunday in the Amarillo Civic Center Complex Auditorium, 401 S. Buchanan St. Tickets are $13 to $48, plus fees. Call 806-378-3096.
"It came to me that one of the things I've been doing over the years is within the party scene are all these characters that are in Clara's dream or the fantasy — the audience is allowed to make up their own mind about what happens," McLean said. So I'm pulling faces from the party for the Snow Prince and Queen, the Spanish dancers, the Arabian prince and princess."
Think of it like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz: "But it wasn't a dream. It was a place, and you and you and you and you were there."
Other minor adjustments were still being finalized last week, McLean said.
"There will be some changes, but it's pretty much the beautiful Nutcracker that we've been putting on," she said.
The ballet dates back to 1892 when Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov choreographed a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on Alexander Dumas' adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Decades later, the ballet became a Christmas-season tradition across the United States, including in Amarillo, where the late Neil Hess first staged it at Tascosa High School in the late 1960s. LSB incorporated in 1976 and has staged the ballet in the Civic Center since 1978. LSB continues to partner with Amarillo Symphony for the live orchestral accompaniment.
The production underwent a $1.3 million redesign in 2007, with new sets, costumes and choreography.
Returning from that 2007 production are Jennifer Kronenberg and Carlos Guerra as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier. The duo retired in 2016 from the Miami City Ballet and founded Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami later that year.
"I'm so excited about them coming back," McLean said. "I think it's going to be great fun.
They'll be joined by LSB dancers McKinlea Kear and Amryn Cowen, who'll alternate as Clara; Eric Prospero as the Nutcracker Prince; and Kel Martin and Boyd Burch, who'll alternate as the Rat King — plus dozens of other dancers from children to senior citizens who bring the show to life.
Amryn Cowen's father, Kyle, will make his LSB debut as a Russian dancer; he'll be the one doing standing backflips.
"Two of the dancers' daddies (Cowen and Matt Gonzales) have stepped up to the challenge and leanred the Russian dance," McLean said.
That's pretty much the show's whole philosophy.
"It's a family affair," McLean said. "Not just the families who come to the show every year, but on the stage.
"The Nutcracker is that wonderful beginning of the Christmas season that is about love and family and the celebration of the season," McLean continued. "It's one of those really great, fun stories. Like I said earlier, I love to tell stories, and this is one of the best."
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and on Facebook.
