For Ballet West dancers, the company’s historic production of The Nutcracker is more than an annual holiday tradition. For many, it is a proving ground. It is sort of a report card for dancers who are ready to expand into more prominent performing roles not just in The Nutcracker but also in the company’s internationally distinguished repertoire of classic and modern ballets.
One of numerous compelling explanations about how deeply The Nutcracker has been ingrained in Ballet West’s history from its earliest days came from Michael Onstad, who danced as the Snow Prince in the 1974 production. As a Salt Lake Tribune feature noted at the time, Onstad had danced as “a parent, a mouse, the host, a soloist in the Waltz of the Flowers and Dr. Drosselmeyer. This year [1974], he alternates as the aging doctor, Snow Prince, and in the Arabian and the Waltz of the Flowers segments.”
Ballet West. Photo: Beau Pearson.
Why did The Nutcracker matter every year, even if dancers knew the entirety of it by heart. “Nutcracker is like a report card,” Onstad explained. “It means I’ve grown a year… I’m excited to see what roles I’ll be doing… And I love magic. I read fantasy stories for pleasure… You can feel discouraged, annoyed, upset and you can hurt, physically from pain, but Nutcracker takes that all away.”
This year is significant for two Ballet West artists, as an example: Jake Preece, who was promoted to demi-soloist in 2022, and Victoria Vassos, who was promoted to soloist in 2023. For Preece, who missed the entire 2024-2025 season because of a torn ACL, he is “back at 100%,” as he mentioned in an interview with The Utah Review. This year’s Nutcracker marks his return to dancing on stage.
During the run, which begins today and continues through Dec. 27 at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City, Preece will variously take on four roles, including the Mouse King, Dr. Drosselmeyer and the Sugar Plum Cavalier, along with performing in the Spanish Dance. Meanwhile, for Vassos, who has performed since 2023 in the Sugar Plum Fairy role, this will be the first time she also will dance as the Snow Queen, in one of the rotating casts during the run.
Photo Credit: Beau Pearson.
A Vancouver, Canada native, Preece said his earliest memories of The Nutcracker started when he was four and his grandparents took him every Christmas to the Winnipeg ballet. During his teens, he began his training at the Goh Ballet Academy in Vancouver, and he rapidly progressed, landing a scholarship, at the age of 16, to train at The School of American Ballet in New York City. It wasn’t long before the annual holiday tradition for the teenager transported him to the stage, where he started appearing in the party scenes and eventually landing a “dream role” as the Nutcracker Prince. When he went to the Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s Professional Division in Seattle, Preece would perform in George Balanchine’s version of the Christmas classic.
After joining Ballet West II in 2016, Preece quickly became familiar with the historic version by Willam Christensen, affectionately known by everyone as Mr. C. This version is now formally acknowledged as America’s 1st Nutcracker™ and was named by the State of Utah in 2024 as a Living Historic Landmark, the first such distinction for a performing arts production in the U.S.
In the time before he was promoted to the main company in 2019, Preece danced the party scene, the onstage battle between the mice and toy soldiers and was a cover for the Trepak (Russian) Dance and the Spanish Dance. He also appeared as Mother Buffoon. In 2021, for the main company, Preece was the Mouse King and the Sugar Plum Cavalier, as well as performing in the Spanish Dance and Waltz of the Flowers.
Photo Credit: Beau Pearson.
While audiences are always enthralled by Ballet West’s blend of holiday joy, whimsy riffs and magical exuberance in Christensen’s Nutcracker, the dancers emphasize its rigorous technical demands of precision and stamina. Preece mentioned the skill needed to nail the lifts as naturally as possible in the pas de deux scenes. He added that performing in The Nutcracker has made him more confident in partnering, a quintessential skill for any aspiring company soloist. Preece’s performing portfolio at Ballet West has included leading roles in Adam Sklute’s Giselle and Swan Lake, John Cranko’s Onegin and Balanchine’s Prodigal Son.
For Vassos, who is from Ticino, Switzerland and Serres, Greece, her major performing experiences in The Nutcracker is stateside. However, when she was a child, she recalled seeing it on DVDs and attending the Zurich Opera House where story ballets such as The Nutcracker and Cinderella. In Switzerland, she started at the Area Danza ballet school and then in her teens went to Germany’s Staatliche Ballettschule Berlin, where she graduated a year before joining the Ballet West Academy as a trainee in 2016. A year later, she was in Ballet West II, and within a couple of years, she became acquainted with numerous roles as a corps dancer in the ballet. After being promoted to the main company in 2019, she eventually performed in the role of Frau Stahlbaum as well as in the Arabian Dance.
In 2023 and 2024, she took on one of the ballet’s most famous roles as Sugar Plum Fairy. “Each year you think it should get easier but it doesn’t,” Vassos said. The role requires incredible stamina and sustained balances, along with complex en pointe footwork, pirouettes and port de bras which reinforce the delicate scoring featuring the celesta. “Dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy has given me the confidence to pursue harder and more challenging roles,” she explained. “I also think a lot about how to portray the character so the audience is brought into the world of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” The Snow Queen, of course, appears at the end of the first act when she welcomes Clara and The Nutcracker Prince. A benevolent guide for Clara, the Snow Queen also performs in the Waltz of the Flowers. “It’s a role that is sharper and more to the point than with the Sugar Plum Fairy,” she added.
Vassos said she treasures the beauty of doing The Nutcracker every year because of “the opportunity to grow in these roles and face the challenges of becoming these characters.” She added, “It is an emotional rollercoaster because it’s a hard job with ups and downs every year, but I love it.”
With Ballet West, Vassos has danced in William Forsythe’s Blake Works I, Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, Dark Angel in Balanchine’s Serenade, the Fairy Godmother and Summer Fairy in Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, Sklute’s Swan Lake and Giselle, Balanchine’s Jewels, Smuin’s Romeo + Juliet, the Lilac Fairy and Fairy Kindness in Sklute’s The Sleeping Beauty, and The Bride in Nijinska’s The Wedding,
Bruce Caldwell, Ballet West’s rehearsal director and company archivist, knows first-hand the experiences that Preece and Vassos mentioned. A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, he began his ballet training at age 10 and his first appearance onstage was in
Christensen’s The Nutcracker in 1961, as Drosselmeyer’s nephew. His main career with Ballet West began in 1968 and he has since then cultivated an immense encyclopedia of knowledge as a dance artist and as an artistic administrator for the company.
As for casting, Caldwell said, in an interview with The Utah Review, with so many performances in the annual run of The Nutcracker, “there are new challenges every year because we have so many roles to fill.” He said, “Sometimes it can be a tough pill for some to swallow,” if they are not yet quite ready to take on one of the more famous roles in the production.
Caldwell has ensured that the artistic integrity of Mr. C’s vision for this historic production is sustained. “At that time, he did all the rehearsing and he injected a lot of his personality into it,” Caldwell explained. “I strive to keep this every year when we’re putting it together.” He added that he was especially proud of the upgrade in costumes and sets for the ballet which were finalized in 2017, the version which continues today.
One of the biggest moves occurred when the staging of the production was moved from Kingsbury Hall at The University of Utah to the Capitol Theatre. Caldwell recalled that at Kingsbury, the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Sugar Plum Cavalier, who were waiting to come on stage for their big moment in the second act, had to sit out in the cold in a makeshift outhouse close to the loading.
For many in Salt Lake City, the greatest source of pride has been Mr. C’s efforts to make the first American version of The Nutcracker, which he transported from its San Francisco premiere in 1944 to the University of Utah in the 1950s and eventually to its permanent spot in the Ballet West repertoire. The first Nutcracker was a huge success. A buoyant Mr. C wanted to stage Hansel and Gretel for the San Francisco Opera, as part of the general ballet repertoire. “And a stage hand said, “You’ll lose your shirt. ‘Cause they do it at the Met but out here it hasn’t succeeded.” Mr. C said the stage hand was right: “I personally lost $9,000. In 1944, that was quite a bit of money. And I went back to the Nutcracker and it’s never stopped.” In fact, it would be in 1949 when The Nutcracker came back to San Francisco and it has been presented annually ever since.
After he retired, Christensen was asked frequently in interviews about how he crafted his version of the holiday classic. He initially built the skeleton for it by cobbling details from recollections of dancers and choreographers as well as an edited version that was performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. It was Balanchine who told him about the Mother Buffoon number and the eight young dancers hidden under her skirt. Mr. C wanted a version closer musically to Tchaikovsky’s scoring:
So most of the steps are mine – my own creation. But musically, it’s absolutely right on the beam. As dancers become better, it gets better. And then, I change some, because I like to keep new vitality. The company is far better now than it used to be. So we can do much better.
He talked about walking in downtown San Francisco during the wartime years and hearing a recording of the Dance of the Mirlitons, which was being played in a store window display. He insisted on a strong visualization of Tchaikovsky’s familiar music: “And I thought, well, in the musical play, I used to say, if you could come out singing the tune, it’s a success.”
He talked to White Russians, including those who were pre-Bolshevik. Russell Hartley, who was then a 19-year-old dancer, created the costumes for the first production. Antonio Sotomayor, a South American artist, designed the backdrops which were covered with images of cupcakes, candy canes, ice cream cones and lollipops. The orchestral score had been obtained from the U.S. Library of Congress. The recording Mr. C was most familiar with was from Leopold Stokowski, the legendary conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Photo: Beau Pearson.
Jared Oaks, who conducts the Ballet West Orchestra, ensures the enchanting appeal of Tchaikovsky’s popular score is as fresh as ever. “Every year the Ballet West Orchestra and I meet the wonderful challenges associated with The Nutcracker, especially its nuances and phrasing in the music,” he said. “After countless piano rehearsals featuring our company pianist Emily Barrett and myself, musicians descend into the pit to make the most of this incredibly rich work. I like to think of it as an expressive etude for myself and the players. No two performances should be identical, but we aim for consistency at the same time.”
“Mr. C loved to tell a story and he told the story of The Nutcracker very well,” Caldwell, who also choreographed his own version of the ballet which premiered in Amarillo during the early 2000s said. “Every year, it is charming and beautiful and Mr. C always kept it light with some gags and tricks and he managed to bring it together into a phenomenon that has lasted for many years.”
For tickets and more information, see the Ballet West website.