Gulf Coast Symphony and Gulfshore Ballet are producing Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall once again this year. Both Gulfshore Ballet Artistic Director Iliana Lopez and Maestro Andrew Kurtz are proud of the role their organizations have played in making the Nutcracker a Southwest Florida holiday tradition.
Kurtz has seen George Ballanchine performances over the years in New York and Philadelphia. He became intimately familiar with the interplay between professional ballet dancers and Tchaikovsky’s soaring score as Assistant Conductor of the Pennsylvania Ballet years ago. In his estimation, GCS and Gulfshore Ballet’s collaboration ranks among the country’s top productions.
“This is a first-class, first-rate production that you would see anywhere in the country,” said Kurtz. “So, if Nutcracker means the holidays to you as it does to me, this is the performance you really want to see.”
Kurtz cites the magnificent sets, dazzling costumes, and opulent confines of the 1,795-seat BB Mann Performing Arts Hall as features that distinguish this production of Nutcracker.
“So, you have this massive stage where you may have 70, 80 dancers at one point, and scenery and these costumes plus a full symphony in the pit creating this wonderful sound," said Kurtz. "Having been to venues all across the world, really, it’s a really nice venue. It’s excellent for sound and it’s great for sight lines …. So, it’s definitely a great place to have a first experience with the Nutcracker.”
The BB Mann isn’t just a terrific venue for audiences. It provides an unmatched opportunity for young dancers to get a taste of what it’s like to perform at prestigious venues worldwide.
Among Gulfshore Ballet’s rising stars is Ella Litvak. Audiences will see her in this year’s Nutcracker as both Dew Drop in The Waltz of the Flowers and the Arabian Princess. The high school sophomore has been dancing Nutcracker for more than a decade, but performing with Gulf Coast Symphony in BB Mann is unquestionably the highlight of her holiday season, if not entire year.
“It’s very intimidating,” conceded Litvak. “But so much fun because you have that whole stage. And it’s such an opportunity for girls in this Fort Myers town to perform at such a big stage like that.”
Ella suspects that some of the kids who see Nutcracker this year may be inspired to pursue ballet themselves.
“It’s what really started my love for ballet as a little girl. This is what sparked my passion for the stage.”
Cypress Lake High School senior Melia Brockington plays Chocolate Spanish, Chinese Tea, and Russian Candy Canes in the Nutcracker. She thrills at the very thought of stepping on a stage that’s seen so many great performers and performances.
“I feel like so lucky to be there, and like I just love the lights and the thought of the big audience,” Brockington said. “I just love being on stage and performing. Seeing the lights and smiling up at them is just like so exciting. And it just brings the joy the sacred stage where lots of people have performed. It’s just amazing. “
Gulfshore Ballet Artistic Directors Iliana Lopez and Franklin Gamero tailor each year’s choreography to the number, age and composition of their students and professional dancers. This year’s Nutcracker will therefore be quite different from last year’s version.
“We have a few new things this year,” teased Iliana Lopez. “We’re bringing back Mother Comedian and the Polichinelles , which is a very, very favorite part of all audiences. It’s a really sweet section with small children. They come out of that huge, huge skirt that comes on stage and the person that performs this is dancing on stilts.”
This year’s Nutcracker will also be visited by angels.
“We have our Suite Level 1 students performing this part," said Lopez. "They’re going to come from the audience into the stage to add a little more magic into this performance.”
In the final analysis, the involvement of so many young children and their parents is what codifies Southwest Florida’s Nutcracker as a reflection of the community.
“Nutcracker has kids sometimes as little as four or five years old as the mice all the way up to these professional dancers who’ve maybe been dancing for 20, 25 years,” observed Maestro Kurtz. “And to see that blend on stage and sense of community, to me, that’s what it’s always about.”
This year’s performances of Nutcracker at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall are Saturday, December 16th at 2 and 7 p.m.
To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.
Audio is engineered and produced by WGCU's Tara Calligan.
Spotlight on the Arts for WGCU is funded in part by Naomi Bloom, Jay & Toshiko Tompkins, and Julie & Phil Wade.
MORE INFORMATION
- Nutcracker traces its origins to an 1816 holiday story written by E.T.A. Hoffman. Some 30 years later, Alexandre Dumas of “Three Musketeers” fame penned an adaptation. Nearly 50 years after that, Russian composer Pytor Tchaikovsky composed a ballet that’s gone on to become the most produced ballet around the world, bar none.
- The story follows a young girl named Clara, who creeps downstairs on Christmas Eve to retrieve her favorite gift, a nutcracker that was given to her by her godfather, a mysterious magician. Nodding off on the sofa, she is suddenly whisked her off on a magical adventure. After defeating the villainous Mouse King, Clara and the Nutcracker fly on a golden sleigh through the Land of Snow to the Kingdom of Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy serves up a dazzling display of dances, including her own. Back at home in bed, Clara is convinced it must all have been a dream. Or was it?
- This year’s Nutcracker includes Mother Comedian (La Mère Gigogne) and the Polichinelles. Mother Comedian is a larger than life fertility figure whose crinoline dress hides all of her children, the Polichinelles.
- Maestro Kurtz cites another reason he’s excited about this year’s Nutcracker. “[Gulfshore Ballet] has become a professional company, so we have professional dancers as well as their school’s students performing. It’s the best of both worlds.”
- And this development mirrors the evolution of Gulf Coast Symphony. “We were primarily community-based, with a small amount of professionals. Now we’re essentially a professional orchestra with a small group of community members who still play in the Symphony. And that’s the special sauce, I think, for both organizations … to have the enthusiasm and passion and love coming from the people who are doing it because they want to be there along with these young professionals who are pushing to have this great career. It just makes for great chemistry.”
- The professional ballet company will enable Southwest Florida to not only attract top talent from around the world, but retain the talent that Artistic Directors Ileana Lopez and Franklin Gamero have been producing for years. “The testament [to Gulfshore Ballet’s stature and the instruction and choreography of Lopez and Gamero] is that so many of the dancers who were in those primary roles when we did performances seven, eight, nine years ago are now in professional companies having really nice careers,” Kurtz points out.
- “We have a lot of students that continue with professional careers,” adds Lopez. “In fact, we just lost three last season. Two are in Milwaukee Ballet. One is in the second company of Milwaukee Ballet and one is as a trainee. The other dancer is with Kansas City Ballet. And we also have a dancer that’s signed a contract with Royal Danish Ballet in Europe. We have dancers that have gone to Houston and Boston Ballet. We have Anna McKinney who is in San Francisco.”
- This year, the Nutcracker will feature a number of dancers who are joining Gulfshore Ballet’s professional company.
- “The girl that is playing the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Snow Queen is going to be a part of the company, and we have two other trainees that have been studying with us for a couple of years that are joining the company as well,” Lopez notes.
- The change in the age, number and experience of Lopez and Gamero’s dancers doesn’t just necessitate revisions to their renowned brand of choreography. It requires Kurtz to adapt how the orchestra performs Tchaikovsky’s brilliant score. Older, more experienced dancers are able to stretch and extend in a way that requires Kurtz to slow the piece’s tempo. By contrast, younger, less disciplined dancers cannot extend their young bodies as much, so when they’re on stage Kurtz has to speed up the tempo a hair.
- While Lopez and Gamero’s students rehearse Nutcracker for ten weeks, the professional ballet dancers that Gulfshore brings in for the production typically only arrive a day or two before the performance. And because of the BB Mann’s full production schedule, the Symphony and ballet company barely get one day of on-stage rehearsals. Luckily, Kurtz has the knowledge and experience to make adjustments to the piece’s tempo as each performance unfolds.
- “I never know exactly what that’s going to be until they’re on the stage,” Kurtz says with a knowing smile. “As I’ve grown as a conductor, and as I’ve gained more experience conducting Nutcracker, I feel that nuance and can make those adjustments on the fly as I’m watching the dancers.”
- The limited amount of on-stage rehearsal time also impacts the dancers. During rehearsals, they dance to canned music, albeit music recorded from Gulf Coast Symphony’s performance the year or two before. But that does not fully prepare them for the experience of dancing to live music, and it’s not just the way the tempo changes depending who’s on stage.
- “Maestro Kurtz is a fantastic conductor and has conducted this ballet many, many times,” says Lopez. “That’s why we enjoy really having this collaboration with the Gulf Coast Symphony. We really understand each other. He usually tries to follow the tempos as much as he can, so it makes it very familiar and we can trust, we can trust him on what he’s doing.”
- But changing tempos is only part of the equation.
- “The sound is different because they’re used to it coming just from speakers and all of a sudden they’re hearing and being surrounded by that live orchestral sound,” observes Kurtz.
- And then there’s the butterflies. “I remember back in my day when I was dancing with Miami City Ballet and that feeling of hearing the musicians warming up in the pit,” recalls Lopze. “It always gave me a little bit of butterflies in my stomach. I think our students feel the same.” While the reason for her butterflies is different these days, Lopez will make an appearance early in Nutcracker as Clara’s mother, Frau Stahlbaum.
- In Iliana Lopez’s experience, even people who only have a passing interest in ballet relate to Nutcracker because the music has become such an integral part of pop culture. “It’s very familiar, so you can bring your whole family. You can come with your grandchildren and your little kids and even people that don’t get to watch ballet often, they seem to enjoy The Nutcracker.”
- In addition to the two performances at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, Gulfshore Ballet will be performing Nutcracker to recorded music in two nearly-sold-out shows at the Tribby Art Center at Shell Point on December 9th. They also performed a portion of the ballet in Marco earlier as well as at Bell Tower on December 1st.
- In addition to the community at large, Gulfshore Ballet’s students look forward to the support of their family and friends.
- For Melia Brockington, that’s her mom and siblings. “Well, my brother, I going to be honest, he doesn’t really like to watch,” Melia chuckles. “But my mom and my sister, they just say I’m so beautiful and graceful and my smile, I look like I’m enjoying myself.”
- “My family comes every single year, and they love watching me every year,” adds Ella Litvak. “My dad always says that he only has eyes for me when I’m on stage, even when I was still a young girl in the chore dances. That always made me feel very special and made me feel seen - especially because I come here every single day and I love having my parents watch me and appreciate all the work I put in.”
- You can make Melia, Ella and the rest of Gulfshore Ballet’s students and professional dancers feel seen and appreciated by coming to one (or both) of their performances of the Nutcracker at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall on December 16th.