Barre Association: Oklahoma City Ballet taps nationwide talent for magical new Nutcracker
When holiday traditions need some fresh magic, it marks the time to tip-toe into something new.
This holiday season, the Oklahoma City Ballet invites you to rediscover a timeless tale in a way you’ve never seen before.
The corps is giving audiences a newfound sense of wonder this winter by bringing an all-new production of The Nutcracker to the Civic Center stage Dec. 14-15 and 19-23, presented by Devon Energy and the Chickasaw Nation.
While The Nutcracker is an annual holiday staple across the nation, this production’s new creative direction breathes new life into the nearly 140-year old ballet, giving new opportunities to marvel at the dazzling sets, lighting, scenic backdrops and costumes. While this production has been just two years in the making, Oklahoma City Ballet artistic director Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye has had his sights on creating new production of beloved holiday ballet for several years.
The Nutcracker Prince for Oklahoma City Ballet’s The Nutcracker.
Photo by Shevaun Williams
“We’re not merely staging a performance; we’re crafting a warm, wholesome, holiday story, and a visually stunning masterpiece for our audience,” says Jolicoeur-Nye. “Audiences can expect to be awed by the visual appeal of the production.”
Citing other works like The Wizard of Oz, a sprinkle of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and a dash of Elf in his creative direction, Jolicoeur-Nye’s goal is for attendees, young and old alike, to be swept away in the splendor.
Outfitting the Opulence
While audiences can expect to relax and be delighted at the grand visions and elegant grace depicted on stage this December, there’s a lot of pressure on Jolicoeur-Nye and his team to get it right. As Jolicoeur-Nye explained, The Nutcracker is the bread and butter of every nonprofit ballet company like Oklahoma City Ballet; the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) stated that about 48% of a nonprofit ballet’s annual revenue is attributable to Nutcracker sales.
To achieve that je ne sais quoi that keeps audiences dreaming of sugar plums is no small fiscal feat. While the first American performance of The Nutcracker — staged in San Francisco in 1944, during WWII — only had a budget of $1,000, the NEA estimated most modern productions of The Nutcracker can cost at least $2 million.
Photo by Hannah Hudson
A significant part of the past couple of years leading up to the 2024 Nutcracker was the fundraising phase, but when that was complete, Jolicoeur-Nye was able to secure some of the best creatives and crafters in the nation, if not the world.
“For example, [Eric Winterling Inc.] who are making our Sugar Plum, Snow Queen and Cavalier costumes, are the same people who built costumes for The Lion King and Wicked on Broadway,” says Jolicoeur-Nye. Additional credits for the costume shop? HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and Broadway’s Frozen the Musical.
And how did Oklahoma City Ballet gain access to some of the best creative minds and makers in the ballet world? Some of it can harken back to Jolicoeur-Nye’s career in ballet. Holly Hynes, the Oklahoma City Ballet’s Nutcracker costume designer, worked on the Kansas City Ballet’s Nutcracker in which Jolicoeur-Nye was dancing.
“She made my Drosselmeyer costume, and I always just really appreciated her design, and thought if there's somebody that I know and also somebody I can trust, I'm going to reach out to Holly,” recalls Jolicoeur-Nye.
Hynes, the go-to choice for dance costuming in the United States and a 40-year veteran of the industry, has worked as the costume designer for four different Nutcracker productions in the past 10 years (this is after her prodigious 21 years as the Director of Costumes for the New York City Ballet).
Visually, Jolicoeur-Nye wanted the production to stand out, to evoke and explore art nouveau, an artistic movement and style characterized by flowing lines and the use of nature as a primary motif, mixing fantasy with reality. Setting the production a little later than most other productions of Nutcracker, aiming for the turn of the century instead of late 1800s, afforded Hynes an opportunity to lean into this and make some interesting artistic choices.
“I do feel like I’m sharing my favorite book with people. It’s just that I’m illustrating it a different way,” says Hynes.
“We’re not merely staging a performance; we’re crafting a warm, wholesome, holiday story, and a visually stunning masterpiece for our audience.”
In New York City, renowned costume designer Holly Hynes observes a fitting for The Nutcracker.
Photo by Hannah Hudson
Photo by Hannah Hudson
Power in the Process
Hynes’ process of designing over 200 costumes worn by three different casts, a system well honed through her work at New York City Ballet, went off seamlessly.
She first sent sketches to Jolicoeur-Nye, who approves the silhouette of the garment for the sake of the dancer and choreography; for instance, Hynes suggested a return to romantic skirts on the corps de ballet in the snow, instead of tutus, to help fill the stage with a sense of grandeur.
When the watercolor version of the sketch was finalized and approved, these designs were then shared with the lightning and set designer, which can affect the choices both of those teams make.
“For example, I didn’t want to put any wings on the Sugar Plum Fairy because she’s partnered a lot, and it was going to get in the way.” Hynes then explained that set designer Michael Raiford developed the Sugar Plum Fairy’s throne, which does have wings attached to it — showing how the costuming can work in tandem with the set design to tell the story.
After all the sketches were signed off, Hynes started assembling her team of costume shops that would start shopping for fabrics and assemble the pieces.
“But you don’t want to start buying too much fabric before you know where it’s got to go. So we rented a space that allowed the shoppers to be able to tag all the fabric,” says Hynes, showing one of six four-inch binders at the back of her office. Known as a show bible, these binders (with over 4,000 swatches of fabric) are sent to each of the 18 individual costume shops responsible for producing each costume.
Photo by Shevaun Williams
Photo by Shevaun Williams
Conscious Choices
One theme that runs through Hynes’ work and the entirety of Jolicoeur-Nye’s new production is that of intentionality. After the party scene in Act I, the colors and textures of the fabrics (and who is wearing them) carry over to the battle sequence later in the act after the dancers change characters. For instance, the butler and the maid have elements on their costumes that transfer into the Rat King and Rat Queen.
But one of the standout choices of this production of The Nutcracker is the choice to be sensitive toward potential cultural stereotyping in Act II’s Land of the Sweets. In many legacy productions of The Nutcracker, each sweet or delicacy represented a country or region, with regionally specific choreography to match: candy canes from Russia, tea from China, coffee from Arabia and chocolate from Spain. Often, this left productions in a spot of being more stereotypical in their depictions of these cultures.
“There is a little bit of a challenge, because when Tchaikovsky wrote the music, for example, the Spanish music, it does sound like Spanish music. That’s the purpose of it. So, deviating away from movement that reflects that kind of separates you from the music, which is hard,” explains Jolicoeur-Nye.
So in this new production, audiences will see dancers representing coffee, ribbon candy, hot chocolate and medovik (Russian honey cake). As Hynes explains it, the team wanted to be “respectful of the different cultures and countries in the second act” by moving to this new portrayal in the Land of Sweets, without putting dancers in costumes that accidentally made a caricature of a different culture’s garments.
And Hynes’ thoughtful approach to these updates to production reflects her commitment to every last detail of The Nutcracker. Eagle-eyed viewers will begin to notice a subtle recurring motif in the garments on stage: a dragonfly.
“I often will have like a little easter egg of surprise somewhere [on costumes], a little detail. So I’ve hidden dragonflies all over this thing. Maybe nobody in the audience even sees it, but the dancer knows it’s there. A little something in their sleeve, or a little embroidery on a name tag,” says Hynes.
But why the dragonfly?
“Let’s find a little joy in a performance for children in December, when the weather is going to be maybe snowy, and dark and gloomy,” says Hynes. “And just like a dragonfly, it’s a reminder that there’s magic everywhere.”
And we could all use a little magic right now.
Oklahoma City Ballet’s all-new production of The Nutcracker takes place Dec. 14-15 and Dec. 19-23. Tickets are on sale and can be purchased by calling (405) 848-TOES or online at okcballet.org.