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The Louisville Ballet closed the first run of its new production of The Nutcracker yesterday, after more than a dozen performances. And it produced some surprising results. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports.

Just after the economy took a nosedive last year, the Louisville Ballet had its lowest selling production of The Nutcracker. And it had to shave more than $1 million from its $3.5 million budget.

But ticket sales from the company’s new production of The Nutcracker has officials looking up — so says, the company’s executive director Dwight Hutton.

“We are ecstatic with the response from the public for this production,” Hutton says. “We’ve had the highest attendance numbers since the ‘90s, and we are nearing a 40 percent increase over last year, which is phenomenal.”

Hutton says most companies staging new Nutcracker productions generally see a 20 percent increase in ticket sales.

He also says the company is building audiences, even during a recession, and has increased community support.

“We budgeted very conservatively, I must admit,” he says, “but we have experienced the highest subscription numbers this year than we have in 10 years, and we are we are overachieving on our earned income, contributed income.”

This success comes as many arts groups nationwide are struggling amid the recession. He says that that corporate contributions are still fewer and often in lower amounts than before the recession.

He says local excitement about the new Nutcracker production should work to enhance the company’s reputation in Louisville and beyond.

“I think we’ve proved to all of our corporate supporters and individual donors that given the opportunity that we can produce a world-class product,” he says. “I, quite frankly, expect us to work harder and achieve even higher attendance next year.”

Two years ago, the company received a $1 million grant from the Brown-Forman Corporation to create new sets, costumes and choreography for The Nutcracker.

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This weekend, the Louisville Ballet raises the curtain on a ballet that has been two years in the making. A newly designed and choreographed version of “The Nutcracker.” And, as WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports, the company has a lot riding on the success of a ballet that’s more then a century old.

In 1892, The Nutcracker with its soaring score by Tchaikovsky premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Russia. But not until the 1950s did productions begin to proliferate in the United States. In 1954, George Balanchine, the late New York City Ballet artistic director, staged the story in his first full-length ballet for the company. And it became widely know during the decade when CBS televised parts of Balanchine’s piece into homes nationwide.

Now, The Nutcracker is a staple each season for ballet companies from coast to coast, says dance historian and Barnard College professor Lynn Garafola.

“For American ballet companies, a huge part of their earned income comes from The Nutcracker,” she says.

Box office sales often comprise up to 50 percent of many companies’ annual ticket sales. But there are also salient reasons for The Nutcracker’s appeal to audiences. Garafola cites its focus on a celebration in the home and how productions involve the community, often including adults and scores of children on stage and off. She also says its second act — with several divertissements or dance interludes — gave way to choreographers putting their own take on the ballet.

“And so in a sense, this meant that Nutcracker could be reinterpreted by different generations, in different localities, in a lot of different ways,” she says. “It’s something that seems to have morphed over time into something that is no longer simply ballet.”

Those ideas were not lost on Louisville Ballet artistic director Bruce Simpson when the Brown Forman Corp. agreed two years ago to give the company a $1 million grant for a new Nutcracker production.

Simpson says foremost — “It has to be a Nutcracker for Louisville.”

He wanted it to have a stunning design and magical presentation. So, he enlisted top costume and scenic designers — even a magician who’s worked with Broadway musicals. And he wanted a choreographer whose work could reflect the sense of fluidity he sees the city reap from the Ohio River. For that, he chose Val Caniparoli, one of the country’s top ballet choreographers. Caniparoli got his start as a dancer and choreographer with the San Francisco Ballet. And he knows the Louisville Ballet dancers through leading them to stage some of his works. So, Simpson knew what he would get with Caniparoli.

“I know that his bar is set incredibly high. I mean this Nutcracker is unbelievably difficult for the dancers.

In rehearsals, Caniparoli is focused but also has a certain ease. He and the dancers often discuss the choreography as they though they are teammates. But critics note that the work he puts on stage has rigor, drama and grace; it’s rooted in classical ballet but has contemporary moves that entail interesting bends of the back and dramatic use of the arms.

As for The Nutcracker, Caniparoli still dances in San Francisco Ballet stagings, but he wanted to create his own choreography — with inspiration from some significant productions. Those are versions choreographed by some of the San Francisco Ballet’s early leaders — the Christenson brothers. The eldest, Willam Christiansen, choreographed the first full-length Nutcracker staged in the U.S. in 1944. Years later, his brother, Lew, staged his own version when he led the company. Caniparoli is familiar with both versions and says he’s worked to infuse the Louisville production with their spirit.

“The Christensen’s were big in Vaudeville; that’s their background. So, a lot of his ballets were very broad, very big actions, but it made sense and that stuck with me,” Caniparolis says. “And there’s a lot of that technique in this work.”

In the meanwhile, ballet officials say ticket sales for the new production have been higher than expected. And with the curtain set to rise tomorrow, the ballet’s Bruce Simpson has a few hopes.

“I want the audience to recognize that what they’re seeing is the absolute best Nutcracker that can be achieved with the resources that Louisville has,” he says. “But the bottom line is it has to entertain the audience.”

Beginning this weekend and throughout the month, audiences for the Louisville Ballet’s newly designed and choreographed Nutcracker will weigh in with their dollars and their own conclusions.

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Some Louisville arts groups say they will continue a program that offers discounted tickets to many performances. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.

The Kentucky Center, the Fund for the Arts and its member groups launched the Arts Rush program in January. From then through the end of the season, the program sold more than 2,500 $10 tickets that were offered just before nearly 70 performances.

Many arts administration officials say the response dispelled initial doubts about offering discounted tickets. One is Kentucky Center president Stephen Klein.

“There’s always a little bit of a nagging doubt that we’re going to be putting these tickets out; they won’t be valued as much; we won’t have the kind of revenues,” Klein says. “But we’re seeing a lot of people we just haven’t seen before and that’s very healthy.”

Several participating arts officials say the program is helping build audiences, in part, by making tickets affordable to families with children. One is Allan Cowen, the Fund for the Arts president and CEO.

“Arts Rush is, at its heart, built on a simple premise: you make the arts available and you make the arts reasonable and people will utilize the programs,” Cowen says. “And as people rally around the arts, it will build many, many opportunities.”

Klein echoes that sentiment and says it hasn’t hurt the market for full-priced tickets, which secure seats in advance.

“Filling the house is always good — and a lot of the people who buy the rush tickets would not be able to go period, much less for expensive tickets,” Klein says. “A lot of folks still buy the full-price tickets in advance; they know they want to go see a show and they buy the tickets at the full price.”

Throughout this season, seven arts groups are offering rush tickets for more then 90 performances. Click here for a list of performances.

Tickets are sold in person on a first come, first served basis at the box office just two hours prior to the selected performances.

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