Mixed Nuts for the Holidays Alternatives to The Nutcracker.

Many dance companies are turning to pop culture for evening-length substitutes to that traditional Christmas cash cow, The Nutcracker.

The desire to keep old audiences while attracting new ones has inspired artistic directors to program some offbeat companion pieces to Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker. Works about such pop culture fixtures as vampires and monsters, and scores based on the hits of Elvis Presley and Rolling Stones are turning up in the repertories of troupes across the country. Ballets about Dracula have been created by several regional companies this decade; in 1997--the centennial of Bram Stoker's novel--Houston Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre coproduced Ben Stevenson's version, which entered the repertory of Boston Ballet last May [see "Dracula Deluge," October, page 86]. Blue Suede Shoes, premiered by Cleveland San Jose Ballet in 1996, is described by artistic director Dennis Nahat as a "ballet music video." In that same year, Septime Webre made Where the Wild Things Are, based on the best-selling children's book by Maurice Sendak, for American Repertory Ballet. One of the most popular of Michael Smuin's works, created for his Smuin Ballets/SF [see page 88], was based on Pinocchio.

The first sensational mining of rock scores occurred in 1993, when the Joffrey Ballet premiered its controversial Billboards, set to songs by the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Two years later, Houston Ballet gave the American premiere of Rooster, set to the music of the Rolling Stones by its resident choreographer, Christopher Bruce. The stage and screen have also supplied inspiration. Even New York City Ballet dancers were singing as well as dancing in Jerome Robbins's 1995 West Side Story Suite. When Hong Kong Ballet visited New York City two seasons ago, it brought along an evening-length ballet called The Last Emperor, which bore more than a passing resemblance to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 Oscar-winning movie.

"The presence of problems always engenders creative solutions," says Webre, now artistic director of Washington Ballet. "Ingenuity in the face of building a country from scratch was a driving force in the success of American culture and American society over the last two hundred years. Likewise, I think that ballet directors and ballet organizations, when times are tight financially, are forced to find creative solutions. For some, that means relying heavily on well-known works from nineteenth-century repertory. For others, it means developing a unique voice, and using that voice to develop a niche." (As artistic director of the New Jersey-based American Repertory Ballet, Webre had also produced a Swan Lake set in New York City in 1912, when high society was dominated by John Jacob Astor.)

Nahat would agree. He recalls the genesis of his Blue Suede Shoes: "Before the 1995-96 season began, we were talking about doing new full-length ballets. I said, `Now wait a minute, guys. We shouldn't be looking at raising money for ballets that everybody else is doing all the time and that we will be doing in the future. We should look to do original pieces.'

"I had been daydreaming about a piece for a while, and it just came to a point of clarity at that point. I said, `Well, what about a ballet to Elvis? You don't want to do another Sleeping Beauty right now.' And they said, `Wow!' And that's what happened. I actually laid out the whole ballet right then and there that evening and then we went to work on it. I spent hours poring over cuts of music and getting contracts. And we went to Graceland to explain the project to the estate and to get their backing and blessing. They couldn't have been nicer. Priscilla Presley even came to the opening."

Funding proved hard to come by. "No one was interested in supporting a piece like that for a ballet company," Nahat says. "So we did it for-profit. We set up an adjunct organization to the company called New Dance Adventures, and auditioned it. People invested in it." Blue Suede Shoes, with sets and costumes designed by Bob Mackie, earned standing ovations almost every night in Cleveland and San Jose and on tour. (Some ticket buyers may not have realized it was a ballet, because in many cities it was presented on a season of touring Broadway shows.) PBS devoted a special telecast to it in 1998. "Audiences are seeing us that may never have seen dance before," Nahat says. "And hopefully we're doing the local dance companies a good turn by getting audiences to see dance, because I've heard people in the lobby saying, `Gee, we've got our own ballet company, too. I wonder what they do.' And so I hope it's piquing interest as well as getting the show out." Yet, for all its audience appeal, Shoes wasn't quite the windfall that Nahat had expected.

Ben Stevenson, artistic director of Houston Ballet, first thought about choreographing Dracula as long as fifteen years ago; he says its audience appeal was always on his mind: "Works like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty have a reputation. One is trying to capture a larger audience with the full-length ballets, and hopefully those audiences will return to see other ballets. People feel, `Oh, I've not been to the ballet. I don't know very much about it, but I know Dracula or Cinderella. I'll go and see that and see if I like it.' I think Dracula was very popular when we first did it here in Houston, because people were intrigued to see what we were going to do."

Kevin McKenzie, now artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, was Stevenson's original inspiration. "Kevin's a sort of tall, dark, handsome guy," Stevenson recalls. "And so I went home thinking, I've got to think up something for him. And I turned on the television. There was the old Bela Lugosi Dracula movie. So I started thinking about it then, that long ago. Then Kevin retired. But I still had this idea going around in my head."

When Stevenson wanted to make a ballet for Houston Ballet principal dancer Timothy O'Keefe, the idea of Dracula came up again. "He's such a good artist and such a good actor" says Stevenson, "and somehow you need someone with a lot of presence as Dracula. If I hadn't had a really fabulous Dracula maybe I wouldn't have done it." Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, which was also interested in doing a new evening-length work, agreed to pay half the cost with Houston. Now Boston Ballet has taken it up.

These offbeat ballets have, for the most part, had the positive effects hoped for. Recalling his tenure at American Repertory Ballet, Webre says, "The company was very fortunate to be touring maybe eight weeks a year or so, especially given the current climate. Where the Wild Things Are, with its sets and costumes designed by Sendak himself, helped give us an individualized point of view. It provided something that was particular about us. We were in close competition with New York companies and could not have survived and flourished if we had modeled ourself on them. I think ballet companies have to, given the current climate for arts organizations, really think outside the box. I see more and more companies making works that will have artistic integrity while attracting and expanding audiences. That's definitely a trend."

As for that "ballet music video" Nahat believes the ultimate result of his Blue Suede Shoes was positive: "It turned into something that I thought it would right at the beginning, because the dancers have more work now and it actually helped the company go through a very difficult financial time. I knew that it could be good, that it could do something that would be different. I didn't know at first what the magnitude of it could be. On opening night, it was just ballistic. And every night, actually, the audience is just clapping through the last ten minutes of the show. And it turns into a real lovefest of rock and roll and American dance."

Ellen Dunkel writes about dance for the Bergen Record and other publications. She is also an editor for Philly.com, Web site of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.