At 7:43 p.m. on December 28, after a lengthy standing ovation, the curtain went down on the final performance of Pacific Northwest Balletâs Nutcracker before its indefinite hiatus. After 32 years, this Nutcracker, designed by Maurice Sendak and choreographed by George Balanchine pupil Kent Stowell, had become a Seattle institutionâloved and lampooned like any cultural icon. (One year, The Strangerâs calendar listing for Nutcracker joked that it had been designed by Maurice Sendak and choreographed by Colonel Muammar Gaddafiâeven we were surprised by the intensity of the blowback.) Gary Tucker, media relations manager at PNB, says putting this Nutcracker into retirement provoked a mixed response, from âIâm excited to see the next oneâ to âyouâve ruined Christmas.â
The mood backstage was surprisingly sentimental after this final-final curtain, even among longtime crew members whoâd seen decades of Nutcrackers. Dancers and stagehands talked about kids whoâd grown up in Nutcrackerâsome went on to professional dance careers while others eventually had children who, years later, joined its next generation of performers.
Photographer Malcolm Smith and I lurked around the theater that night and the next day, watching as costumes, props, and sets were hung, dismantled, folded, packed into boxes, and carted off to the vault.
- Malcolm Smith
- This was the final image, besides the curtain call, audiences saw of this Nutcracker before it was tucked away for the foreseeable future. This is one of the productionâs many âdrops,â painted fabrics that depict different settingsâa Christmas party, a stormy sea, the palace of a âpashaââand are raised and lowered by multiple teams, some backstage and some 100 feet in the air above them. The ground-floor crew communicates with the upstairs crew via radio, telling them when to pull the ropes and when to add and remove 5 to 30-lb weights to facilitate the process.
Many more photos follow after the jump.
- Malcolm Smith
- Sendakâs design has a rounded, dusty-pastel, âOrientalâ aesthetic. While they were putting the production together, Sendak and Stowell imagined that Dr. Stahlbaumâfather of Clara, the balletâs heroineâhad been a diplomat and collected all the exotica we see during the party scene in act one, and which grows to immense proportions during Claraâs hallucinogenic dream in act two. For this production, dancers wear turbans and stereotypical old-timey Chinese silk suitsâthe "dervishes" even wear frizzy black wigs and chunky gold chains with flesh-colored shirts. Media relations manager Gary Tucker said PNB has never received serious criticism for these broad-strokes âethnicâ costumes that were designed decades ago. âOne time someone complained that we had a dancer in blackface,â he said. âBut they were actually just watching a black dancer.â
- Malcolm Smith
- By the time the curtain fell at 7:43 pm, Rita Brown and the other union dressers were already doing their own quick-stepping backstage, speedily packing costumes into crates. By 8:15, almost all the costumes were put away. By 8:30, everybody was headed home.
- Malcolm Smith
- Some of the dressers said they do an average of seven loads of laundry per show (in rotationânot every costume gets washed every time) and hand-wash between eight and twelve individual costumes. Costumes that are too delicate for the dryer are put in a âdry roomâ that sucks away the moisture. âYou can get old really fast standing in there,â someone said as they passed by. Some costumes are just spritzed with Everclear or high-proof vodka to kill any potentially odiferous bacteria.
- Malcolm Smith
- All told, the costumes fit into 16 crates and one drum for tutus. (This Nutcracker was not a tutu-heavy show.) The dressers said they do not use mothballs. The next productionâwhich uses George Balanchineâs 1954 choreography but will be designed by another childrenâs book author, Ian Falconer of the Olivia seriesâwill be brighter, with a less dusty and dreamy color palette.
- Malcolm Smith
- As the dressers packed things away, dancers walked byâsome barefoot with duct tape wrapped around their toes and various parts of their presumably chafed feetâcarrying bottles of champagne and hugging each other. One dresser greeted a young woman by exclaiming: âYou survived all this!â The young woman smiled. âI loved it!â she said, then paused. âAlmost all of the time.â
- Malcolm Smith
- Upstairs, the stagehands were getting a jump on striking tomorrowâs set by rolling up and thunking around heavy cylinders of marley, the layer of rubbery material covering the stage. The floor pattern was designed to be colorfully vague, but is primarily useful for the children so they know where to stand during their parts. âThis floor goes into the rehearsal room studio for the kids,â Tucker saidâeven though this Nutcracker is headed into the vault, the workers at PNB kept referring to it in the present tense.
- Malcolm Smith
- Every effect in this Nutcrackerâincluding the boat ride across the stormy ocean and the dumping of the snowâis hand-manipulated. The upcoming Balanchine production will have more automated elements. Desta Olds, whose father is a longtime stagehand (pictured above), had been shadowing one of the assistant stage managers for this show. She said she was surprised by the backstage action and details sheâd never seen from the audience, like set pieces that had been decorated from behind with tinsel and pieces of tape autographed by the child dancers. She also learned that when Clara and the Prince take their famous boat ride, children will wave at them from backstage, trying to get them to return the gesture. âIf theyâre nice, theyâll wave back,â Olds said. âBut theyâre trying to act out there.â
- Malcolm Smith
- Stagehands dismantle one of two clocksâa small one and a large oneâthat appear in the show. Maurice Sendak had designed the production from his house, alongside visiting PNB artists, and the set was built over three months in seven different cities. Tucker said that when Sendak came out to see the first production being assembled, he saw the small clock and said: âJesus, thatâs huge! Whereâs the small clock?â Randall G. âRicoâ Chiarelli, PNBâs resident lighting designer, smiled and said: âThat is the small clock.â
- Malcolm Smith
- Tucker said PNB representatives would call Sendak before each opening night to say they were thinking of him. As the years went by, Sendak took to replying: âYouâre still doing that damn thing?â
- Malcolm Smith
- The next morning, as stagehands rolled, tipped, and dismantled set pieces, one of them held up some pieces of wood and asked, âwhat do we do with all this?â Another grinned: âMake a bundle and use âem for kindling.â
- Malcolm Smith
- Flymen spent the day pulling on ropes at the stage-right edge of the room, raising and lowering the pipes that held drops and lighting instruments. Between raisings and lowerings, you could hear heavy clunks from high above as stagehands overhead removed metal weights to assist the flymen below. Stagehands swapped stories about times when weights had fallen from high aboveââa 30-lb weight at 90 feet is just a missile,â one of them saidâand smashed into concrete floors below, leaving huge craters. Nobody in any of these stories was hurt. At the far left side of the photo above, near the ropes, you can see an oblong piece of wood painted with the words âCHATTYâS TONGUE DEPRESSOR.â This was made for one loquacious stagehand, nicknamed âChatty,â who everybody thought talked too much.
- Malcolm Smith
- Around the time that the crew began to dismantle the Nutcrackerâs face, a spotlight operator and another stagehand talked about peopleâs various levels of sentimentalityâin general, it seemed to range from medium to highâand how some of the union members in the room werenât even born when their colleagues worked the inaugural production. The spotlight operator also said that every year, some dancers complain that his lights, which shine in their eyes, are getting brighter. ââNo,â I tell them. âYouâre just getting older!ââ
- Malcolm Smith
- The drops were lifted a few feet off the ground, pulled upstage from the bottom, and slowly lowered so they eventually lay flat on the stage where they could be dismantled. Then the pieces were carted off to trucks waiting at the loading bay on far stage left.
- Malcolm Smith
- As one pipe was being lifted, it clanked against a lighting instrument high above. âThat,â one of the flymen said to nobody in particular, âis music.â
- Malcolm Smith
- The specks of white on the floor are chemically fireproofed paper snowflakesâand they donât taste very good. (I tried.) Every year, the final performance gets an extra dose of snow as the crew dumps all the leftovers onto the stage. Dancers caught in particularly large flurries hurry offstage, spitting out little clouds of the stuff. Earlier in the day, I saw a white paper cup attached to one of the pipes. Nobody seemed to know what it was forâso you can see it in the dark from below? To keep something from catching on something else?âuntil one of the senior stage crew heard the question and laughed. âThat was a gag,â he said. âFor dumping snow on somebodyââpresumably a backstage colleague.
- Malcolm Smith
- Throughout the strike, stagehands speculated about when the Sendak/Stowell Nutcracker would return. They all agreed it wouldnât take long. âRetiring this is like Cher retiring,â one said. âHow many âfarewellâ Cher tours have you worked?â another asked him. The answer: three. âIâve worked four,â the second man said. âI predict theyâll open their new Nutcracker, run it three or four years until it pays for itself, then bring this one back,â a third volunteered. âYou canât get rid of tradition.â