By Michael J. Love
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Michelle Dorrance, Hannah Heller, and Josette Wiggan, the creator-collaborators of Dorrance Dance’s The Nutcracker Suite, who’ve approached their tap dance version of the holiday classic with a deep, intentional sense of imaginative play and child-like whimsy. Condensed here are their thoughts and musings on their influences, inspirations, process, and practices.
Dorrance: I fell in love with this particular Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn adaptation of the Tchaikovsky score when my mom [M’Liss Dorrance, co-founder of the Ballet School of Chapel Hill in North Carolina] and her colleagues, including my mentor, Gene Medler [founder of the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble], got together to create this thing that was barely like a Nutcracker when I was 11. The only version I'd ever seen before that was a classical ballet Nutcracker, which I did love. But I then saw my mom and her friends take risks in storytelling, investigate character, and create a story ballet for children. It imprinted so much on me to see that work go from the last run in the studio, to the tech process, to the stage. It blew my mind.
One of the things that is really important to Hannah, Josette, and me is keeping kids really, truly engaged. We’re not just waiting for “the Land of Sweets.” We want every step of the story to mean something. And, this is a show for adults and kids alike. I think, of course, the best children’s stories are.
The three of us are coming together to make this thing that ideally will ask young people to come into the space, to feel welcome, and to feel creative.
Wiggan: Jazz dance is America’s folk dance. Tap dance, Lindy Hop, Charleston, Black Bottom, solo jazz... These are all under the umbrella of Vernacular Jazz dance. To be able to take this classic ballet that is a holiday tradition in this country, compare it with a dance form that's one hundred percent American, and present it back to everyone to show, “Hey, this is who we are. This is part of our heritage and it should be celebrated,” has been such an amazing journey. We created a world, and we’re inviting everyone in. We wanted to take the playfulness, otherworldliness, and magic that jazz dance and music can create and make it a reality. But it comes from Ellington's music as the foundation and our research. And it comes from the work of women dancers who have been in the background for a very long time: Marie Bryant, Marion Coles, Consuela Harris, Norma Miller, Mable Lee, Daisy Richardson. There’s still countless others who contributed so much. When I was first listening to the score and setting the Sugar Rum Cherry choreography, I felt this heaviness, which is opposite of how this character is usually a little bit lighter and more buoyant. But I felt this grounded nature and this pull to the earth and that encompasses, I think, who these women were and what they represent. They grounded themselves and held onto the tradition. I wanted to create a solo in which their steps could still exist but be relevant today.
Sugar Rum Cherry (Josette Wiggan) and the Sugar Rum Blossoms.
Heller: Something fundamental to all the things we’re doing is the social element of these forms we’re working with—the event element. Vernacular jazz, jazz music, and tap dance, they’re social events, gatherings of community. Of course, there’s performance and they’re performative forms. But they’re inherently inclusive. I work in theater because I like building community and integrating story with community. Child spaces, family spaces, should be about this—the event of inclusivity, the event of socializing.
Sometimes, there’s these sort of invisible boundaries that dancers have. But no one seemed to have boundaries. And everyone was just really embodied. We encouraged the cast to really play, because the choreography and the movement syntax has so much in it. So, we added on a little character sauce and fantasy.
Wiggan: Hannah set the tone and led by example. I feel this is why everyone had freedom and was willing to push themselves and explore. Hannah was one hundred percent committed, open, and free to try everything.
Dorrance: Early on, we laughed ourselves to tears watching this improvisational dance video of Josette’s daughter we all love to pieces. And it inspires me to this day. That’s what we’re after—that baby dancing, my godkids dancing, my twin nephews dancing like that. How can we get to that place, especially now in a period when we’re anxiety-ridden and scared about what’s happening in the world? How can we continue to invite children into a place of play and a space where their ideas and their expression is safe?
Heller: And, a place where their ideas can be big?
Dorrance: It was important to us to have Clara overcome being outcast a little bit, to be the more awkward or the ignored daughter versus the beloved son. So, we shifted a few little bits of the narrative so that kids watching who might feel on the outside of things know that their dreams matter and that they can be heroes.
Wiggan: The same with having a woman play the Nutcracker—to show that girls can be the strong, brave hero in both capacities. And my goal was to allow marginalized groups to see themselves and to celebrate themselves and to understand that there’s a place for them in this world—to inspire the little boys and the little girls out there that look like me.
The Nutcracker and Clara watch the dance of Sugar Rum Cherry's Cavalier.
Dorrance: This score—we almost never work to recorded music—is the only recording that I’d set work to. My gosh, it is so swinging. It is so smart. The arrangement is so satisfying, so juicy. To have the layers of these giants, Tchaikovsky, Ellington, Strayhorn—that’s crazy. To get to dance to something like that? And it’s very rare that you’ll have a giant recreate something that another giant made.
Heller: The score is just such a revelation. And, of course, you know, we’re giving spectacle. But, if I could put a sign outside the theater, it’d say, “Just enjoy, dammit.”
Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist and scholar based in the Philadelphia, PA area where he is Assistant Professor of Dance at Ursinus College.
If you’re feeling as enchanted as I did when I first saw Dorrance Dance’s The Nutcracker Suite in 2019 and want to dig deeper, I encourage you to follow the references and suggestions for further listening and viewing that Dorrance, Heller, and Wiggan gave me which include the 1987 Colin Chilvers-directed short film for Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” the 1969 Bob Fosse-directed Sweet Charity (specifically the Sammy Davis Jr.-led “The Rhythm of Life”), Heather Lyn MacDonald’s 2006 documentary Been Rich All My Life, and, of course, the 1960 recording of Ellington and Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite.
Photos by Christopher Duggan.
From the fleet-footed imaginations of tap dance stars Michelle Dorrance and Josette Wiggan, and their collaborator and downtown theater darling Hannah Heller, comes this jazzy new vision of the holiday tradition. Part seasonal concert, part tap ballet, The Nutcracker Suite is a toe-tapping, hand-clapping revelation set to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s extraordinary arrangement of the Tchaikovsky classic.
