“The Nutcracker” is more than just deft dance moves, vivid costumes and a captivating score — although the classic ballet is certainly that, too.
“The Nutcracker” endures as a holiday favorite because it provides a model for young dancers to grow, and a palette for choreographers to tweak tradition and invoke childhood memories.
“When I grew up in ballet school, we did ‘Nutcracker’ every year because it was really a vehicle to start as a mouse, then a soldier, then a party kid, then work your way up to your first full en pointe,” said Sandra Kerr Carlson, associate artistic director of Littleton’s International Youth Ballet.
“It’s really progressive because it has roles for the youngest all the way up through Sugar Plum Fairy. We’re very careful to pick things where we can show the kids off at an extremely high professional level, and ‘Nutcracker’ has a lot of appropriate roles to make them look good at that particular age.”
This is the 10th year for the company’s “Nutcracker,” which runs at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts Dec. 3-5. With the school in Littleton for the past eight years, the recently minted International Youth Ballet now produces a “Nutcracker” that includes 90 students and four guest artists in lead roles, ranging from Colorado Ballet’s Andrew Thompson to dancers trained in Russia and Cuba.
“For the most part, it’s all kids,” said artistic director Mark Carlson, a former professional dancer of 20 years who has worked in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere. “The older dancers who are doing the lead roles and ensemble roles are prize winners in Youth America Grand Prix and Denver Ballet Guild, so it’s really a high quality of youth dancers putting in many hours a week.”
The endless struggle to set one company’s “Nutcracker” apart from the annual slew means International Youth Ballet has been rehearsing its version since September. The dancers, who range in age from 6 to 18, back up the company’s “international” name by performing professionally all over the world.
“We’re doing something that not very many people in the whole country are doing,” said Kerr Carlson, a former Colorado Ballet dancer who has also performed internationally. “We’re producing kids of an extremely high caliber. And we’re shoving them out the door left and right to go to Boston, New York and Europe to see what other people in the world are doing, whereas a lot of schools want them to stay there and train for longer.”
Despite that, many of the dancers in International Youth Ballet’s “Nutcracker” cast have worked their way up through the show over a half- dozen years or more.
It’s a model that has benefited “Nutcracker” productions around the world, practically since the ballet made its debut outside of Russia in 1934 — and it’s part of the reason it plays an integral role in many dance companies’ repertoires.
“If kids go and see kids their age dancing and looking good onstage, it just sparks something in their imagination. Like, ‘That could be me. I could do that,’ ” Kerr Carlson said. “It’s an attainable goal and a chance for them to win roles, to change and grow and repeat. We’re trying to give dancers something that’s challenging and a reward, but that also inspires their passion.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
