Piedmont Symphony and Fairfax Ballet join forces on Nutcracker Dec. 6-7

Every December performances of the Nutcracker, both musical and balletic, sprout up like mushrooms all over the country, and this year Fauquier County is fortunate to have a couple of highly accomplished productions. Last week the Lasley Ballet presented a sparkling version of the holiday classic in its entirety.

This weekend the Fairfax Ballet joins the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra for the second time to present a slightly shorter version.

Glenn Quader, music director of the Piedmont Symphony, was quoted in a press release as saying, “We are excited to welcome back the sheer perfection of the Fairfax Ballet Company for a second presentation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite. The orchestra will also perform several timeless holiday classics, including a new setting of A Child is Born/Silent Night arranged by PSO’s very own bass trombonist,  Paul Rawlins. Rawlins joined the orchestra two seasons ago following a career as the bass trombonist of the United States Air Force Airmen of Note Jazz Orchestra.”

The Nutcracker, a ballet in two acts, was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The story is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” It premiered on December 18, 1892, and was not a success.

But the 20-minute Suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet became enormously popular. (The late Oleg Tupine, a principal dancer with the famed Ballet Russes, used to say, “Anytime we were running short of money, we dragged out The Nutcracker to solve the problem.”) For many years this was the only part of the ballet to be performed. A few sporadic attempts were made at staging the entire ballet, but none had any lasting power.

That changed in December of 1954 when, under the direction of the great choreographer George Balanchine, the New York City Ballet gave its first annual performance of the complete Nutcracker. It was an instant smash hit, and ever since, Christmas performances of The Nutcracker have been a staple of ballet companies and schools throughout the world

“This is our second time performing Nutcracker excerpts in the PSO concert. We had a very positive reception last time,” Margaret Virkus, artistic director of the Fairfax Ballet, was quoted in the news release. “That year the ballet company did not do our full length Nutcracker and I choreographed everything specifically for the space at Highland School with only nine dancers. Since we are doing a full length Nut this year the weekend prior to the PSO concert, we will be bringing more dancers, 22, I think, and squeezing Waltz of the Flowers with 13 dancers onto the much smaller Highland School stage, so that’s a challenge. Also, our visiting guest artists will have returned to where they came from, so a couple of our dancers will be filling in some of those spots for the first time.

“We began performing The Nutcracker in 1991. Most years we have used recorded music, but for a few years, we had the Fairfax Symphony play at our performances and it was always interesting because regular orchestras can play the music at whatever tempo the conductor wants, but for dance performances, tempo is very important and we will have one rehearsal on the Tuesday before the concert, to get that set.

“More experienced dancers are pretty good at adjusting to minor tempo changes but we have some intermediate level dancers in some small parts and, even for the experienced ones, well, they can only jump so slowly, so if it’s too slow it’s a problem. I’m happy to say I don’t remember having any problems with tempi under Glenn Quader’s expert guidance. Our entire experience was delightful. The orchestra was very welcoming and friendly and the press said very nice things about us, so all was terrific!”

The Nutcracker will be performed on Saturday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 7 at 3 p.m. As are all PSO performances, the concert will be held at The Highland School, 597 Broadview Avenue, Warrenton, Virginia. Get tickets at the door on the day of the performance. For more information call 540-270-3168