Milwaukee Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ Journey Continues

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Photo by Rachel Malehorn

Milwaukee Ballet's ‘Nutcracker’ 2024

Milwaukee Ballet's ‘Nutcracker: Drosselmeyer’s Imaginarium’ 2024

Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker: Drosselmeyer’s Imaginarium is two years old this holiday season, still a child as ballets go. It’s a major re-imagining of the version Pink created to Tchaikovsky’s classic score in 2003, when he was Milwaukee Ballet’s new artistic director and saddled with the scenery and costumes of an older, more conventional production. For 20 years, he worked to make another version, one that’s very much his own, and it was born a year ago.

That new Nutcracker featured entirely new scenery and lighting, and 175 extraordinarily beautiful costumes. Pink’s unique vision of the tale meant lots of brand new choreography, as well. The second act is basically a new ballet. And while it was a hit with last year’s audiences, Pink saw much to re-create for this year’s showing. 

“I’ve done a lot with a lot of it,” he tells me.  “Anything of this scale, the first time it comes out there’s insufficient time to make all the decisions you’d like to make. It’s terrifying because you’re dealing with so many moving parts and there’s no guarantee that anything will work. We had scenery and costumes arriving literally just before we opened, things that had to be repaired or rebuilt. There were bits of things that should have been on the set that never made it there. They’re in a box somewhere.

“After it was over,” he continues, “I got a chance to sit back and look at it, over and over, on video, and make notes about the areas that needed more, that needed changes, that didn’t work. Act Two in particular needed a huge amount of work.”

The Toymaker’s Gift

Tchaikovsky tells the story though the music he wrote for the 1892 Russian premiere. You can hear the story. The toymaker Drosselmeyer attends a family Christmas party with a special present for his goddaughter Clara. It’s a nutcracker in the form of a toy soldier. The party is disturbed by a rat that somehow got into the house. The beast is killed. All’s well. After the party at bedtime, the story shifts to Clara’s dream in which her now-human nutcracker soldier kills the Rat King, then takes her to a fairyland of snow overseen by the Snow Queen. Happy revels follow. That’s the first act story. 

The second act, however, is a standard 19th century string of dances for the company’s soloists and corps, heavy with stereotypical representations of nations and genders. Then morning arrives and Clara wakes.

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Photo by Rachel Malehorn

Milwaukee Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ 2024

Milwaukee Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker: Drosselmeyer’s Imaginarium’ 2024

Pink had already made exciting changes in his previous telling. He gave dreaming Clara some company. She traveled to the Land of Snow with younger brother Fritz, older sister Marie, and Drosselmeyer’s nephew Karl. Marie and Karl are in love in Clara’s dream. In the second act, Pink tossed the stereotypes and gave the four travelers real action to play. 

In Drosselmeyer’s Imaginarium, he goes further. “My goal,” Pink says about his new second act, “is to link the acts so that the audience continues on that journey with Clara, Fritz, Marie and Karl, from the Land of Snow on through the Imaginarium, which I’m always thinking of as an extended workshop of your imagination.”

The Lion and the Phoenix

So rather than watching Spanish, Arabian and Chinese dances, our travelers meet the inhabitants of a Capitol City in Clara’s imagination, and then travel to a cosmic Oasis where they meet a lion and a giant phoenix bird. Then it’s on to a Balloon Meadow, a Fun Town of clowns, and a Land of Confections where Madame Bonbon and her little bonbons dance and Marie is a Sugar Plum Fairy.

But how to represent travel? “At one point, I got one of those huge wheels that people can stand inside of, with a clock on it,” Pink says. “We were working out whether Fritz and Clara could walk inside it like hamsters in a wheel, and time would pass. Or I was going to build a beautiful flying machine with the wings of a bird, until I learned what it cost. We had to let that go, which nearly killed me.

“So where dancers go and how we link things is a lot more detailed this time, but the major changes are the complete relighting of all of Act Two, to give it a new image, and the rebuilding and repainting of the scenery. They’ll be on a different journey. If you came last year, it’ll only get better. You’ll feel like you’re seeing much more.”

Pink calls the Imaginarium “that place you drift into on your way to sleep, where for two hours you can escape the noise and live inside your own imagination. This is your Imaginarium. It’s meant to spark each audience member’s imagination.

If you know the ballet, rest easy. The incomparable Act One “Snow Pas de Deux” is untouched.

There are 15 weekend performances December 7-24 at the Marcus Performing Arts Center, plus three student matinees and one sensory-friendly performance. For times, dates, and other information contact the Milwaukee Ballet Box Office at 414-902-2103 or visit milwaukeeballet.org.