Right before the curtain comes up, I'm nervous, but it's a very excited nervous.

It's kind of a detachment of myself.

It's almost like time slows down.

You can feel energy vibrating in the building.

I can't wait to see the reaction of the people.

I kno that it's going to be beautiful.

It's going to be breathtaking.

When we've worked for so long.

And everyone has contributed so much time and effort, it's more than just the sum of all the parts.

So much planning and forethought crystallizing in a moment.

This will absolutely be the biggest production that we have ever put on.

It's going to be completely different from anything in the nation.

We're just ready to show Orlando what we've been working on.

Let's do it.

But there's such an emotional component to this ballet.

It's usually the first ballet that young people see.

It means the holiday season to me.

It's Christmas time.

It's a Christmas ballet.

I never get tired of the music.

I never get tired of the story.

And it's all about the joy and the love and the adventure that Clara goes on.

As a young person, that was probably one o the first productions I was in.

That's how a lot of dancer sort of get their first breakout role.

This is very special Nutcracker for me.

Playing Clara for the first time and I think for the whole company as well, because it is a premiere.

Nutcracker is the entry point for ballet.

It's sort of your flagship, and it has to, it has to be something that's very special.

It has to be something that's going to last.

The prior production was well over 30 years old.

The sets, the costumes, everything's pretty worn out.

It was pieced together as they could.

When they could.

We've taken the best care of it.

We could over many, many years, but it really, really was threadbare.

It was definitely time for something fresh and new.

Thinking a little bi outside the box, what we can do with a great piece of art and elevate it.

Tradition is important in The Nutcracker, but I think retelling it in a new and vibrant way with new sets, new designs, new costumes, new choreography is just wonderful and it's so fresh to the audience.

Expectations of audiences have changed drastically in the last ten years alone.

We live in a completely different world where standards are raised.

There's a lot about The Nutcracker stor and the way it's been presented, not just by Orlando Ballet, but many companies that needed a little bit of modernization.

And I think it's also something that shows the community what we're capable of doing as a community.

No organization in Central Florida has ever undertaken a production of this caliber.

We have the capability and we're ready to do it.

So let's do it.

I look at a production like this; it's very much like directing a movie where we start with a basic script and then we storyboard everything.

Then we break down the music in the scenes and then we go in and create and direct and choreograph each scene.

And the process has been fun, actually.

It's refreshing how Jorden choreographed on this music that we are so used to.

Generally, it takes 2 to 3 hours in the studio with the dancers to produce a minute of choreography.

And that's not counting lighting or tech-ing or dressing.

That's just choreography.

Turn a little faster, be a little more daring, like, ladies really think of fouette.

There's two standard forms of dance notation, and it looks very much like a musical score.

Certain symbols will dictate it's the head turn to the right or the left, and you can get right down to fingers.

It's kind of like your own, shorthand.

We have a few symbols that we use that might mean, you know, downstage or moving stage right to left.

And then I have my own way of notating.

And I'll put sketch one, sketch two sketch three.

And then when I get into the studio with the dancers, I'll start working on sketch one.

And often parts of that sketch work, and then I'll try sketch two.

And then I sort of see where the dancers gravitate to the sketch.

We need to get a little more plie.

Generally what happens is he sets the choreography one way, very first rehearsal.

And it's kind of lik a guideline of what he wants it to be.

He'll have these revision rehearsals.

He'll look at a little par and he'll be like, hmm, you know I don't really like what that is anymore.

Do something bigger.

I think stay on the supporting leg a teeny bit longer.

You know what I mean?

You look at the movement and then you say, let's take another four counts with that.

And let's just kind of stretch it out a little bit because it's really beautiful and it's where I want to see that sweep just a little bit longer.

Or maybe it's fine.

And you leave stuff out you know, and go, that's great.

Little extra parts like Ikea furniture.

We use those at some point.

He allows us to take our little personal touches on it and make the character our own, make the dancing our own.

So our emotions really show through in the choreography.

I think that's one of the best parts about choreographing, is that collaboration between the dancers.

You feel very important when you're working with him.

I want you to get that zha, whap, psh.

There, that's, that's better.

He makes you feel like what you say matters.

And that's my favorite part about working with him.

Because a lot of choreographers don't trust their dancers to the extent that Jorden does.

It becomes a really beautifu collaboration with the artists.

And because they are my clay, I'm sculpting on them.

And sometimes the clay has to speak to you to go, no, we'd like to take a littl bit more time to complete that.

It's really refreshing to do something different, but at the same time, it's, it's very challenging because then we have to polish that new step.

Of course, we would have class in the morning and then after that we would rehearse each role separately at first I'd say.

The first time we put together, it was not the ideal I would say, because, you know, like the first time, like you don't know what comes next or you don't know what the, the in-betweens are.

So it took time to figure out for everybody I think.

And as we get closer and closer to the performances now, we're doing a full run of act one and then a lunch brea and then a full run of act two.

I think we are finally coming all together to see the whole picture and it's been really impressive.

I mean, inevitably when you train for a new production like The Nutcracker you are going to have injuries.

We just really need to take care of our bodies, especially not only to get through the rehearsals, but to get through the full run of shows because we have a lot ahead of us.

The great thing is we have such a great team to support our dancers and take care of them, get them through it.

I think a lot of people underestimate how physical and athletic dance is.

Having Orlando Health, supporting our dancers and seeing them through the day to day and the long runs of the show; that's something that is seriously invaluable.

I come out that way.

They have provided free health care for the dancers as well as physical therapy.

Do you feel that just in that spot, or do you feel all the way down?

Dancers have a very short career lifespan.

It can be greatly extended and much more successful if they have good medical oversight.

When people think about The Nutcracker, you know they think about music, dance, athleticism, but they don't think about is the acting.

In some of the scenes you're doing just as much acting as you are dancing.

Keeps the audience entertained, keeps the story moving along and that's a really important part is the acting.

Jorden will say, here's the choreography but you're playing a character, so you need to contribute to who that character is.

I think he's fantasti with giving us a general outline of what he visions, and then kind of letting us run with it and giving us some artistic liberties in each character.

He doe kind of just leave it up to you, he says, you know, he kind of just expects you to try something, and he'll let you kno if he likes it or if he doesn't.

And as long as you're committing to a character and giving him something, he's happy to work with it.

Each rehearsal I'll be adding a little bit more emotions, a little bit more of my own personality to it.

In this Nutcracker, Clara does get to dance a lot.

She has a really beautiful pas de deux with the Nutcracker Prince right before the snow scene.

And she also flies, which is really exciting.

People love it when performers fly.

It's always one of those moments when you go to a production and somebody just lifts off and you're not expecting it, it takes your breath away for a moment.

I think Clara flying helps all of us in the audience feel like we've left reality.

And what better way for an audience to get excited about a character as if they're doing something thats basically impossible.

I fly at first in the beginning of the battle scene.

And this is a way for her to have a really fierce entry into her role as a protagonist in the battle and she's a fighter in there and normally she would just be watching from the side.

It's just enough to get you super excited about what's coming next.

And then after that, I'll fly at the end of the snow scene.

All the snowflakes sort of twirling around and it'll still be snowing on stage.

So it's almost like she's now traveling into chapter two.

You know, the next adventure in the journey.

And then I fly into act two.

We want her descending into this whole new world that's changed over the intermission.

You know, instead of sitting there for the entire act two sort of being a voyeur into this wonderful, magical world.

And then I fly at the very end of the ballet as well.

And the Christmas tree comes back, and then it's almost like sh pops back into the snow globe of of her living room.

Drosselmeyer, is an important element to the story of Nutcracker, because he's the one that gives Clara the Nutcracker.

In some Nutcrackers, he's this strange, older man wearing an eyepatch who does magic tricks but then is apparently also like a bit of a wizard or something.

He's been a little unusual in some productions.

He'll come in and give some magic tricks, but then he'll usually just leave after party scene and he won't be a part of it anymore.

But what makes this Nutcracker so different is that he's throughout the entire thing.

He almost leads Clara as well as The Nutcracker does through her whole adventure.

He's a very, very loving character.

We've kind of taken away any of the mysterious, almost spookiness of him.

In this version, Drosselmeyer creates and maneuvers puppets.

What's exciting about this particular show is we are incorporating marionettes and marionettes, traditionally are a very difficult, type of puppet to perform.

To learn how to perform.

But what's been fascinating in this process is working directly with ballet dancers who naturally have this intrinsic knowledge of how the body moves, how to shift their weight, their posture and poise and performing.

I wanted the doll to have that turn of the century look and feel, but of course, also be light enough and accessible enough for dancers to interact with and maneuver and work with in the production.

We've had puppet coaches come in and teach us how to use these marionette dolls, which was quite tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun.

They kind of taught us how to use them at first and then from there they kind of just let us play with them.

The control is kind of like a cross looking thing, and then there's a little mechanism on the bottom that moves their front arms.

It wasn't easy to get used to at first, but we'd find that like we'd sleep on it and then we come back and then all of a sudden things would work.

One of the through lines to the story is that the Stahlbaums would like to have a goose for Christmas dinner.

A goose puppet will escape running through the village.

There is a bit of tria and error and size differentials and how long the string should be, and we didn't know how that was going to look.

You're going to be you're going to be a little more forward onto it so that when that you know I had it shorter so that it could be operated quickly around corners and stuff like that.

But then for the takeoff, you definitely need that so that it's not all on your wrist.

Its a lo of fun to work with the puppets.

And I mean, it was very new.

We had like three days of three hour rehearsals to like, get acclimated and feel how they move.

It's simpler to have just for the puppeteer to just to have a pull thing that opens the wings up and then they can flap.

Upon getting like the actual goose there is a whole different element of things that I had to learn.

Itll flap its wings.

It has little tail feathers.

Turn your wrist and the head would move.

You know, you had a little flap to like, open the mouth.

That friction that you're feeling there.

That should make it easier for the head as well.

Yeah.

And it just felt like, you know, the goose was actually alive.

I remember I would go home at night and, like watch videos of geese, you know, just running around flying or, you know, attacking people.

What do they do when they take off?

What do they do when they lan to try and replicate in the most believable, life-like way?

It was hard to, like, separate yourself from the goose because, like, sometimes you had to, like basically be the goose.

But other times you were, you know, your own character.

Sometimes it wa when we were messing around and kind of having jokes with one another doing with the goose, that's when the best ideas came.

because we'd do something and then Jorden would kind of see it and be like, hang on a bit.

I like that.

My favorite part of The Nutcracker when I was a kid, watching the show was always that, that imagined the moment when The Nutcracker goes from being a doll to a real person.

And I think that's something that puppetry really lends itself well to and it's a device that we're using really successfully in this production.

You know, because he' going to be on his knees, right, pulling it up and then he's going to pull his scissors out and he's going to cut the strings.

Be something where if he's like thi and then he just goes, you know.

He begins as a marionette and we see him cut him loose from his marionette strings.

And then all of a sudden, because of a remote control offstage by another performer the puppet will actually be able to stand up directly and even salute to the audience.

The references to cultures around the world are part of the dream sequence in the second act, and Tchaikovsky's score is absolutely incredible and takes musical nods from various cultures.

But the cultures had been represented very narrowly.

That was a big part of my re-envisioning the entire story was was to look at, particularly in the second act, those cultural celebrations and find a better way of presenting that.

It moved away from a lot of the stereotypes of those cultures that were used a lot in previous nutcrackers.

So, for example, if you take the Russian scene, it really is a representation of the whole Slavic part of the world.

And so, little nods to different cultures that are all part of that area of the world make it more lush and dimensional and not, unintendedly stereotypical in a way that's not really respectful.

The idea is to be celebrating the beauty of the choreography in the music.

And looking at what Tchaikovsky wrote as the Arabian dance, as I always do, I went back to the music and it it's very circular.

You know, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

So, that to me, was just the perfect marriage to the cyr wheel.

Orlando Ballet's never had a cyr wheel in its production.

And now the dancers have been trained on that and they're doing beautifully.

It's a fascinating part of th production thats very different I had to look it up when Jorden said, yeah, we're gonna have a cyr wheel for Arabian.

We're going to have a what?

But, you know, as soon as I saw the video, I was like, oh yeah, this is going to work great.

They did a really good job at introducing it slowly, so that way the women doing that dance, they can build up the strength and the technique and stuff like that.

I think about this spin.

It's a total different way of thinking about how your body works in relation to this tool that is no needs to be an extension of you.

For the first time, I had no idea what to do.

I didn't even know how to grab it.

It's very heavy.

We think a lot with our feet as dancers.

And you know, I think with cyr wheel, a lot of it's driven with the arms so it's kind of a backwards way of thinking.

And then when I saw he started spinning like insane, we were speechless.

They've been really crushing it and really stepping up to the plate on this opportunity to blend ballet and this more kind of Cirque element.

Yeah.

Good.

Nice.

Very nice.

Having the set pieces be more interactive has added a level of responsibility amongst the dancers.

Some of them are operating them.

Some of them are dancing with them.

We added so many more pieces and the formation of dancing as well changes in the way of we have to maybe do smaller steps.

I do a lot of drawings and patterns and math and you're dealing with the six girls on this side and six girls on this side.

Is it eight and four and four?

So there is a lot of math involved with choreography and the patterning.

We have maybe a week in the stage before we actually have our opening night.

Luckily, in this new building we are able to rehearse to scale.

We're fortunate to have a very large rehearsal hall so anything that could fit through the door, we took over there to maximize the amount of time the dancers could spend learning how to drive a goose or a train.

And it's amazing that they're able to give us that because not a lot of companies have that big space.

Jorden has been playing with like depth and dimension so much in this work.

Especially, you see it show up in the snow scene where we've got these ramps that come on from either side, and there's a snow globe that enters from upstage.

That was an idea that he had early on, that the snowflakes would come in on ramp and come through the snow globe.

So we had like a practice ramp to go down, but we didn't actually see the final thing until we got to the theater.

It was a little scary at first.

They start the smoke towards the end of the Clara and Nutcracker Prince pas de deux.

So then by the time we get out there, there's a lot of smoke.

And sometimes with the snow, they have to figure out the right amount to drop.

So sometimes there's like big piles of snow on the stage and you're like, slipping all over the place.

So then when you have the ramps in the room, like we knew how much room we had.

But then when you have 12 women dancing and in tutus, then, you get a sense of how much room you really have.

You don't know until you actually are in the studio with the artists and the set pieces, and then you do find out.

I think the set and the props, they're just really cool this year.

Colossal is probably my best word for them.

I think it will be visually so stunning that people won't know exactly what went into it, but they will be impressed by the quality of everything.

I was blown away that somebody had conceived this and had made it dimensional.

Now we have a very grand, a very elegant production.

You know, the curtain goes up and there's a wow factor.

And to really get the wow factor that we were looking for, I mean, the level of planning and design and execution of every facet of it, it's just off the charts.

We have two shops.

Theres a team in Cardiff, Wales and ones over in Seattle.

The shop in Seattle are more tinkerer, props guys.

They like to play.

We'll grab it here tomorrow.

I often tell folks that the business here is actually what I call art science laboratories, where we are making tomorrow's art today.

So this is the waddle, right?

There are things that we didn't expect to get in the show that we did because they were just so excited about the prospect of working on it.

We do an experimental prototype, push it out on the stage, take up the curtain.

3000 people look at it and you cross your fingers and hope it works.

The team in Cardiff, they're used to building large scale opera sets.

Talking about backdrops that would be 60ft by 40ft, and they are replicating an image provided to them o maybe an A3 size sheet of paper.

It's a bit of a dark art and a mystery to me because I can't, you know, I'm in awe of what they actually produce.

The biggest challenge was at the time change, because we would have to have meetings at noon our time because it was 5:00 in Cardiff, Wales but it was 9 a.m.

over in Seattle so they were just coming to work and they were just getting ready to go home from work and we'd all have to stop and sit and have a meeting together.

I need to do a specific size of that platform to counter weight.

Do we need to have stage weights in there?

Initially, we get the creative team together, the designer, the director, anyone else that has a stak in what it's going to look like and how it's going to work so that we can hear directly from them what their concepts are.

To have that meeting wit everyone there at the same table really launches the project.

And larger casters could be placed under here.

Typically a job of this nature.

it's a fair sized job.

I mean, you're talking probably over 10,000 man hours involved in building this out.

The first question we asked between our shop and your stage, what is the smallest opening through which it must pass.

All the pieces that we build of course, all have to fit into a 53ft semi-trailer pulled by a tractor all the way across the country.

So a time period, a typical time period for a job of this nature is maybe a three month period of sampling, testing, drawing, understanding fully the client's requirements.

It's actually going to be almost like a hard styrofoam and then they're actually going to like take a ice cream scoop.

So it's actually going to be buil to not look like any other tree.

All these things are laid out in general terms in this packet that we get from the producing company.

Almost always, they include drawings, not unlike drawings you'd have if you were to build a home.

But tied to that is also how it's used.

You know how you use a kitchen in a house, but do you know how you're going to use the grand staircase in a ballroom?

Or perhaps an attack goose?

What's that?

How is it used?

Who uses it?

Do they have any experience with attack geese?

These sorts of things have to be sort of puzzled through.

That person and puppeteer will be in there waiting.

The next phase is the commencement of construction.

And that probably is, in this job was probably a five, maybe six months project that starts very much with a construction side with the, the bulk construction.

There's a lot of steel and timber and stuff lying on the place.

And then last the project gets ready for our artists and scenic artists go to work.

The Ice Castle is something that the shop in Cardiff, Wales, had never done something at that scale in that size.

Invariably, sometime we'll get involved in a project and literally at contract stage or tender stage, we won't actually know how we're going to build it.

We lost a lot of sleep over it.

They sort of had to carve it out of styrofoam initially, and then it was separated into pieces to do the fiberglass forming on top of it.

That in itsel causes a lot of problems because they tend to be quite brittle.

I understand actually in transit it did incur some a little bit of damage and had to be repaired on site in the test build.

For me, the most exciting scene change I would say happens right at the beginning when we go from the village into the house.

Our version that Jorden's created has this force, perspective and the whole stage is covered in dancing.

The entire street scene was built by the shop in Cardiff, except for the toy shop and the poultry shop.

The scary part of that is you've got two shops building two pieces of the same set.

I would put it down here.

Yeah, okay.

The same style, the same paint color, paint scheme, all of that has to match.

And one is being built in Seattle and one's being built in Cardiff.

And then the legs peel away one at a time and all the windows within the village light up from within and they fade as the scenery is moving out of that stage and we reveal the house.

There's the big tree that we see at the end of the street in the town square that then after that first a this scene change becomes the tree that's in the Stahlbaums living room.

Bob and I had conversations about how do we make the same tree feel different.

So the first scene, it feels like it's in the town square, and then it goes into it actually transforms the world as the world changes into the house, the tree is going to stay lit and do some little magical twinkles.

But that tree alone has the capability that I can control every single pixel of light.

So there's about 1500 light sources on that tree.

Then behind that, when Drosselmeyer starts to transform the house and the staircase disappears and the fireplace disappears.

Then we have the big monster tree which is a drop that we will see start to grow.

One of the things that sticks with me is just the sheer repetition of volume.

I think there were over 700 baubles on the tree.

You know, they're all individually made.

I think that's a pretty traditional part of Nutcrackers, that the tree grows, and underneath all the dolls grow and the whole battle happens basically under the tree.

So I think from the beginning that's that kind of fantasy.

So you have the, the Christmas goose, that proceeds to elude the coo throughout the whole party scene I think the idea of a goose did evolve over time.

Well, the goose can come into the battle scene, and now there' what we call a war goose.

Right?

You have a toy, and this toy becomes enlarged to the point where a dancer can hop on the thing and they want to move it around the stage.

Now the goose has grown to about eight feet and the Mouse King rides in on this goose.

We went with the concept of it's sort of like a giant tricycle.

The Mouse King gets on t the giant tricycle and steers it with handlebars, runs the pedals, and if he pulls on the handlebars, the neck comes up.

He would joust wit the Nutcracker where they would joust with candy canes on the hobbyhorse.

We have a drawing of the hobby horse.

So what our master scenic artist did was he chose to create a small model about the same size as the drawing and then we used dental technology to scan this model and create a digital 3D map.

We then take that digital map and enlarge it, feed that information into a five axis CNC machine, which is essentially a robot that carves foam and carve the horse in such a fashion that it'll fit over the steel skeleton that weve made while the machin was carving the foam.

We're going into this world of the battle with the toys coming to life.

It'd be great to have some kind of a train.

In The Nutcracker, we have the locomotive, which is based on a Victorian toy.

I wanted a self-contained power unit that was capable of carrying what I expected would be in the range of 700 t 800 pounds or so of assemblage.

I was able to fin exactly what I was looking for, which is a bariatric wheelchair rated at 1,000 pounds of capacity and able to drive up to 15 miles.

Here's something that you might not think about.

If you built the thing on top of the wheelchair, the it would be like a teeter totter You'd have 13ft of locomotive balanced on a little two foot square with power wheels, and when you open the throttle front ends going to lift up the back end is going to look like a dragster, even at slower speed.

So you have to have some wheels around there to keep the thing level.

And so you control it the same way you would inside your little train cockpit.

There's been a lot of experimentation with the train kind of learning how to drive this train.

It's definitely taken some fine tuning to get used to it, but we've got it spinning around.

It will come on stage, go all the way offstage and then come back on.

You know, Drosselmeyer is driving this trai and it spins around and it like, creates a commotion.

Sort of like a child's like that would be sort of a dream you would have.

And then when I got to what most people consider Mother Ginger and then all her children, this is a spot where we can go a little bit unique.

And then make Mother Ginger, Mother Goose.

So by the time you get to Mother Goose, hopefully it's a little bit of a surprise because she comes out.

She's a globe and then suddenly, you see, maybe it's not a globe, its actually a goose.

You have an eight foot diameter orb and it has to move, inside as an operator and he has feet.

And the the operator will grab it here to move it around on the stage.

Originally it was made for one puppeteer and one rider character, and now we've figured out how to get two puppeteers in the bottom.

Assembly of neck and head has to be more or less hidden at that point.

So I used a sort of an offset hinge, very much like the hinge on the trunk of a car.

And that's counterweighted so that the operator is doing a dead lift of what's probably 40 or 50 pounds.

So her head can raise and lowe and turn, and she can shake her waddle, and the wings come out.

It worked very nicely, but it was a challenge to set all of that in a small orb and still have two people inside to make it move.

When you look at Jorden's career as a dancer, as a choreographer, as a teacher.

director, he has his wealth of knowledge.

He's always been about continuously learning, building productions and incorporating things incrementally bigger and better over time.

You know, when I look back u where I started, first productio that I did was a one act version of Three Musketeers, and that was really where I got to test out my storytelling through choreography.

And when I think about Peter Pan, the first really big, full length I did for a major company, I knew that we had to incorporate flying.

So, I went down to Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas and learned what flying choreography was.

Then, three years after Pete Pan, my version of Moulin Rouge was where the set building I got into with my design team was big and massive steel structures with painted plexiglass that could change configurations.

And then when I look at Gatsby, you know that huge Gatsby mansion and this massive staircase, along with the really important things such as the music.

He really thinks more like a producer, and he thinks about that sort of total picture.

And he would even say he's not a choreographer.

He's a storyteller.

So, of course, he was under consideratio immediately for The Nutcracker.

The first time they asked me, I said no.

Because I just thought there, you know, there's so many Nutcrackers out there.

And, you know, I like to do things that are a little off the beaten path.

A lot of people have a particular idea of how a Nutcracker should be because they grew up with it.

It might be very much part of their holiday tradition.

We've all done hundreds of Nutcrackers and we all sit there and go like, this is we don't like you like that or this and that and you could probably do it your way.

All the works that I've don leading up to this have really, you know, set me up well.

I took some time and I really, you know, I went back and listened to the music again and sort of, you know, it's hard to go if I had to erase the millions of Nutcrackers I've seen and danced, what would I wha would I see if I close my eyes?

So I started to retel myself the story of Nutcracker, which is the biggest and the most ambitious thing that I've ever done.

And then it started to get really fun.

Once we had all these props and the sets and everything well under construction, you know, the focus kind of had to shift to what are the dancers wearing?

What are the costumes going to look like?

Jorden is quite the historian.

When he was looking at Nutcracker, which has pretty much been represented in the Victorian era, he decided it needed to have that vintage appeal.

But this is dance.

The fashion at the time was very heavy and big bustles and layers of skirts and sort of difficult to dance in and difficult to see the dancers in those costumes.

The majority of nutcrackers are usually staged 1800s, but this one is early 1900s, and so it does give it a more modern look.

Fashion was starting to become a little bit more streamlined and things were cut.

They look better on a dancer's body.

It is easier for the dancers to move in period correct fashion from that era.

And you can also see th beautiful lines that they make, which, you know, if you're wearing a huge skirt with a bustle, it's hard enough to move at all.

I think it kind of brings an extra element of style, especially in the party scene.

It's a bit more elegant I think a bit more Downton Abbey kind of style.

The men are not so constricted in their movements, especially for partnering the women, so he doesn't have to worry about lifting a woman over his head.

And, you know, i he going to pull some stitches?

You know, so it's a lot easier on the dancers.

I think in general.

These costumes and the way they're built have allowed me to do much more with the choreography than we could previously.

That's sort of what led us to build the costumes, to accompany and accessorize, so that everything was really in that snowglobe of a world.

So the process starts like this.

At first they take all of our measurements.

They were nice enough to provide these awesome sketches, to give us an idea of the time period he's going for, and the kind of th the energy of the overall show.

Our costume department sends them all of our measurements, so they have a general outline of what our size will be.

And then it will go to a cutter.

They will either cut it out of paper or muslin, a very thin sort of cheesecloth, almost cotton.

But if you can get it, if you can further.

Yeah, that and that you've done the draping terrifically.

The costume base is like without any decoration, without any extra fabric.

It's just like if it was a dress, it's like a simple a camisole just a dress without any color.

It's just for the body to fit.

We will come in and we'll try it on, and then they'll remeasure it make sure everything is perfect.

And then what they'll do is, once we're happy with the shape and how that works, is that then it goes to another wardrobe person who will then disassemble that mockup and then cut it out of fabric.

Put that together.

Then dancer will go for a second, fitting in the real fabric.

Yeah, just a little bit.

I mean, it's beautiful in.

Yeah.

Then when they measure everything, they start putting the, the decoration outside of it.

And even that was exciting just to hear first hand the ideas of how they wan to make the designs a reality.

Like for example, with the Mouse King the thought process of okay, we've got rat tails around his his neck, how are we going to make them 3D?

Okay, well, we can make a like a mesh outline and then fill them and then pipe them in a way.

Just hearing their idea and hearing that build and build and build and snowball.

And then it becomes more personal to, you know, we have a we have multiple casts.

And then there are there are few costumes made.

There's more than one heron or there's more than one Drosselmeyer.

Each dancer gets fit for their costume.

But in general, a costume is made with extra material in the panels or extra material you know, in the cuffs that it can be taken up or it can be taken down depending on who's dancing that role, that year.

So usuall we'll do costume runs and dress rehearsals, because it's a very different process from when we're just wearing t-shirts or a leotard into wearing these intricate costume that are all different textures.

If we find a problem during this costume run through, if there's something that they need to fix, they have to go back.

They actually do their best to listen and incorporate our comfort in the costume as well, because one of the pitfalls of wardrobe in general is the costumes might look great, but the dancers are kind of stuc Sometimes you get like caught in the hands and stuff, like if there's like a hole, like you get slip in and, you know, things like that happen, then you want to avoid that before, you know, you go on stage.

That's why we have a lot of costume runs in studio, and we have our dress rehearsals on stage.

So if anything happens, any malfunctions, buttons pop, hooks pop, they can fix it right then and there.

That collaborative process is really a pleasure to be a part of.

So it's not just a pretty costume.

You have to still be able to dance well and have, you know, no problem with that.

It's just this surreal experience where it's like, wow, that that's made for me when I was a little girl and I would wear costumes and be like, oh, like thi big girl's name in this costume.

Like, that's just so special to be able to, like, see your name in there.

And it's like the only one there right now.

You know that everyone that where is the costume after you is going to look at your name.

It's just kind of amazing to see it go from the start to the end and see that whole process kind of build.

The snowflake costumes are very special to the production.

You know, when Jorden was looking at the design, he did want to make sure that they had a nice, crisp look to them.

So just as any snowflake is unique and different so were our snow costumes.

So each one was slightl different than the rest of them.

It was important because every dancer is like a snowflake, you know, even though they're dancing together as a corps de ballet, you know, each one of those ballerinas has their own personality.

So they're in unison but they're individuals in unison.

So if you were to look at it from the top and look really closely, every snowflake is just a little bit different.

We had a little challenge with those costumes.

We did send the measurements to the costume shop, which was in Italy, and we send the measurements in inches and they designed them in centimeters.

So we did have to make a lot of adjustments.

So now they are very unique to each dancer.

Sometimes a costume is made to help facilitate a quick change.

For instance, Clara has to chang because she has to put a harness on and a dress back over it so that she can fly.

The harnesses that each Clara wears are so perfectly made for each of us that you can't see them under the costume, and you can't see them even when we're flying.

It's just magical.

In act two where you have all the divertissement, the costumes become very tailored to the music that Tchaikovsky wrote.

The new choreography that I wanted to add.

Really my favorite translation is for The Desert Princess.

This has always been known as the Arabian.

What does that desert world look like?

And it holds many countries and many people you know, in her dress there is more of a Moroccan flavor.

It has a gradual flow to it, so that if she were to sort of roll in the cyr wheel, you know, wouldn't be like a tutu or something.

You wouldn't want that.

You would want to have something that kind of flows like a cyr wheel does.

Right?

It's circular.

The heron.

Well, that is a beautiful costume.

The costume and the choreography.

Like, that's a great example of how they work together.

When Jorden had this idea for a bird, what does the music say to me?

It sounds like a bird to me.

The first thing we d is we open our arms and there's just big wings from our wrist to our back.

And so now you see her feathers.

And then he went ahead and made that choreography complement what she's wearing.

When Drosselmeyer lifts her, she flies.

She's a bird.

On stage its just all this beautiful scenery and costumes and all the beautiful dancing going on.

But, you know, it's another dance that nobody sees backstage and that's all the crew.

There's a beautiful artistic process and music and choreography and cut, but then you really get down to the functionality.

Putting it all together starts early, right?

Understanding how much space you have on stage, how much space you have off stage for sets to move, you know, elements to come on and off stage.

The previous production was mostly drops, so it was very small and it fit very nicely into pretty small theaters.

This production, I just thank God we have this much stage space backstage because even in the theater next door, we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to do this production because it just simply wouldn't fit.

And oftentimes you go, well, we wanted to put that scene there, but we can't put that scene there.

We've got to put a scene in between so that we can start to get ready to do that transition.

So, it's not always dictated the way you want.

When its eight trucks of scenery, you kind of got to figure it out on paper first, dont you to figure out how it's all going to come into the theater.

There's a lot of math and a lot of timing and a lot of thought that has to go into the pure functionality of the show.

I couldn't even begin to take a guess at how many pieces of hardware are in this show.

Tens of thousands.

We loaded in the old Nutcracker in an afternoon.

This Nutcracker takes two days.

I'm going to spend probably ten years stumbling onto the perfect way to load this in.

If you were to take a camera and hang it high above the set and look down, you would see not only the choreography of the dancers, but you would see all of the offstage choreography.

And the offstage choreography is every bit as important as what you see on the stage.

So we kind of joke around that there are two show going on during The Nutcracker.

There's one the audience sees on stage, and then, of course, there's the one backstage where we are.

It's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.

There's so many different teams trying to take up real estate at the same time.

Here I've got a group of electricians, I have two sets of carpenters.

I have a fly rail, I have riggers and audio guys and all want to be in the same spot at the same time.

How many crew members is it going to take to move those set pieces of and get the other set pieces in?

It's a traffic cop situation for me when you get to that point At times it' a little squished in the wings.

Weve got to be like excuse me, excuse me.

We try to get everyone out of the way so you can run out there.

When we go in for what we call theater week, and we have those rehearsals in costume and we do run throughs and that sort of thing, then they get a sense of where to be, where to stand, how much time they have from backstag to back in their dressing room.

As the choreographer I have to think of these dancers need to change costumes, so we need to put a scene in tha they have time to go and change, and how long is that scene change?

Most dancers have enough time to get in and out of costume without worry or anxiety.

But there are times, I know that Clara has some pretty quick changes.

We've done very quick change before that it could be in like just a couple of minutes, or you can have like an hour in between your roles.

So it just depends on what roles you're doing.

Quick changes are absolutely taken into account.

Our wardrobe department knows who has a quick change where they're coming off stage, where they need to go on.

Do they need a prop?

We've definitely had to work around the props a bit to make sure that everyone is safe, and we can all do our steps around the props.

They do take up a lot of space.

It can get a little chaotic backstage, especially during party scene and battle scene.

There's a lot of like massive massive props that we had to be super aware of.

They have to know that, a piece is exiting or entering and if it's safe for them.

So there were like little taped off areas where we would have to, like, stand there super still until we saw a certain prop get moved out of the way, and then we'd run to the next tape out spot and then like, scurry away and like, hide in the wings to make sure that we were, like, out of the way, because it's also pretty dark back there.

So we wanted to make sure we weren't getting hit by horses and geese and whatnot.

It takes tim for people to learn how to know when somebody is going to exit, or enter, or try to not be in the way.

Don't stand in front of the lights.

If something big like, a set is coming off stage, you know, they have to be clear.

And the crew on that side, has just been amazing.

They took it upon themselves to help me figure out the dance backstage.

Okay, we're going to move this piece over here to get that piece out and as soon as it's gone, we'l put this piece back over there.

But weve got to make enough space for this piece to come in behind it.

It was literally living Tetris backstage.

The stage manager ends up with a book and in that book are written cues.

All of these programed moves happened in perfect synchrony to make the show that you see onstage.

I think from the beginning, Jorden has wanted a Nutcracker that feels warm and welcoming.

Honestly, he brings heart to all this, all the stories that he choreographs.

He he will bring the heart to it.

And then there's some magic.

He's wanted to add all these spices to it and just bring some of the things from his experiences.

Whether it's puppeteering or flying or, you know, something goin across the stage and bringing it together in this like very welcoming, warm ballet.

I set out to re-envision this great traditional story, and I think we've done that.

This is Broadway.

The size and scale of this show matches several of the Broadway shows I've worked on.

It's definitely been an amazing journey for me with my team, with the dancers, with the organization.

It represents every child's ability to dream and dare.

That's what we want to convey to all our audiences, whether they're children now or just inner children.

Our hope is that the lifetim of the set is at least 20 years, and that people are delighted with it for 20 years, and that the children that see it opening night will bring their children to see it 20 years hence.

I hope that they also se that ballet can involve puppets and big toy trains and snow globes and ice castles and cyr wheels, all these thing that are magical in the theater.

Everything goes together so cohesively.

I think Jorden did a really wonderful job in really making it a show.

And not just a ballet.

The story is there to take you on a journey, and it's to set you in the spirit of the season.

And the new Nutcracker is a grand scale Nutcracker production like nothing I've ever worked on.

The sets, the costumes an the way it all merges together, I would put this on a scale with any major ballet company.

It's an amazing, huge and magical production.

You can see everything coming together and then you're like, wow.

Everyone has practiced like really hard to get there.

And then when you're there with everyone, it's like, this is family.

It's really really beautiful.

I love seeing all the other company dancers dance.

And to finally have that audience, you get that response back, like, I'll be just rooting for them.

I can't wait to let them loose.

We're in the spotlight right now and it's time for us to shine.

I'm really excited, a little bit scared about it, but I think it's gonna be really fun.

Everyone's gonna do a great jo and it's going to be an amazing show.