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Creating a Holiday Classic

The Moscow Ballet Nutcracker Behind the Scenes

“I remember when I was little, really little, I would watch the NYC ballet every Christmas. I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” said 15-year-old Sophie Pickett, a dancer at Rising Star Tumbling and Dance Studio. “My mom had these pointe shoes for decoration in our house and they totally fit me at the time so I partied around in those during the Nutcracker, and that’s when I was like ‘I want to do this. This is cool!’”

29 Casper ballet students joined 40 professional dancers onstage December 7^th for a performance of the Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker. Following auditions with Moscow Ballet dancer Olena Nalyvaiko on October 17^th at host dance studio Beautiful Feet, the selected dancers were taught their choreography by Nalyvaiko herself, and then given seven weeks to rehearse.

“It’s not just like one practice and its perfect, it takes so much work and time and dedication to this for it to turn out the way it is,” said Kiyah Gilmore, a 15-year-old who danced the roles of a snow maiden and a Russian doll. Pickett agreed with Gilmore, “Even though [the dance moves] might not look hard, [it] takes a lot of work to do them and keep up that stamina and still make it look good for that long of a time. It’s harder than it looks and most people just look past that.”

14-year-old Eliza Walters danced in the roles of a snow maiden and a Chinese dancer in the production. “I’ve worked hard on it,” she said just before the show began. “The Chinese part’s the hardest, I want to say the hardest part of the entire thing, because it’s so fast.” However, “I get to wear a cool little Chinese hat. That’s a blast.”

Walters was about three years old when she started dancing. “When I was really little, I took a dance class and I absolutely hated it. I cried every time my parents made me go to dance,” she said. “Then I started doing tumbling and I loved that and then I begged my parents for a year to put me back in dance. They did and then I got in company the next year. So they’re like, ‘maybe we should have made you stay in dance!’” She said, laughing. “Maybe.”

When Walters decided to audition for the Nutcracker, she did so in order to “prove myself, I guess.” Pickett, who danced alongside Walters, auditioned because, “I would rather dance than have people hear me sing; it comes more naturally to me than a lot of other things do. I’ve been dancing for a very long time.”

The day of the performance was a whirlwind: Casper dancers arrived at the performance venue at 1:00 pm, six hours before showtime. Costumes had to be fitted and distributed, pictures had to be taken, and the ballet had to be practiced on the stage for the first time. As the traveling Moscow Ballet company performs in multiple different cities each week, Wednesday was the first and last opportunity for the Casper cast to have a full rehearsal. “My feet hurt,” said Walters.

For most of the Nutcracker participants, the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience, and in a full-length, professional performance, is once-in-a-lifetime. “I think my favorite part is you get to meet a ton of different cool people that you usually wouldn’t get to meet and you kind of get to see how everything works instead of just seeing the final product,” Kiyah Gilmore remarked.

Being a part of the Nutcracker was a great experience for Walters because, “I’ve always loved the Nutcracker. One of my favorite parts of the year was the Nutcracker.” For her, dance is “the way you can express yourself when nobody’s there.” Gilmore agreed that dance is “an escape.”

Following their Casper performance, the Moscow Ballet moved on to their next city—but only after several hours spent defrosting their buses, thanks to the Wyoming winter cold.

Events Center workers prepare the stage for the night’s performance on Wednesday, December 7^th.

The “snow maidens” are fitted for their costumes backstage, early Wednesday afternoon.

Eliza Walters (left) and Sophie Pickett (right) rehearse their Chinese variation en pointe with the Moscow Ballet professionals.

Walters (right) congratulates and gives performance suggestions to Pickett (left) following rehearsal.

From the audience, Walters and Pickett watch the younger children rehearse with the professional dancers before the show.

Nutcracker dancers wait backstage for showtime.

Dancers Pickett, Walters, and Gilmore (left to right) pass the time between rehearsal and showtime in the backstage area.

Walters, a 14-year-old dancer at Rising Star Tumbling and Dance Studio in Casper, performed in the Nutcracker as a snow maiden and a Chinese doll.

Pickett and Gilmore do a younger dancer’s makeup just before the performance.

Pickett (right) assists Walters (left) in sewing elastic onto Walters’s dance shoe backstage as the performance begins.

Walters uses a needle and thread to reattach the elastic to her pointe shoe.

Young dancers dancing in the roles of party children get ready for their grand entrance as the Nutcracker begins onstage.

Following the performance of the Nutcracker, Casper dancers exit the Events Center.