Kansas City Ballet - Steeped in Tradition

The Nutcracker

Dancer Angelina Sansone.

Slipping out a side door, the dancers mixed almost unnoticed into the surge of bodies and traffic exiting the Music Hall after nightly performances last December. With hands stuffed into coat pockets and gym bags slung over shoulder, few in the departing crowd could tell a performer––who only moments ago was on stage in one of the region’s most majestic ballet productions––from a common pedestrian.

Rarely do dancers in a major professional production file out of a venue at the same time as audiences. The distance between the spectators and the performer seems to have dissolved in this venue, however. These dancers breathing cold clouds of December air and following the sidewalk to a bus stop on Central, in some way, are a metaphor for the way the Kansas City Ballet’s annual performances of The Nutcracker have been seamlessly absorbed into the artistic community and city’s imagination.

Local audiences have long supported the Kansas City Ballet’s entire repertoire, but there seems to be a particular affinity for the familiar score and the childhood innocence at the heart of The Nutcracker. Along with the Kansas City Rep’s yearly take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, performances of The Nutcracker are unequivocally the two performance pieces that embody the holiday season in Kansas City.

“In American culture, there is beloved, traditional holiday fare and some identifiable, theatrical presentations that come to mind that when you think about the holidays,” said William Whitener, artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet. “The Nutcracker has definitely been one of those traditional presentations.”

Dancer Paris Wilcox with Kansas City Ballet School Children.

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