A tale of two ‘Nutcrackers’: Wichita has two companies producing the classic Christmas ballet

Number of years running: 20

Performances: Friends offers six performances, including two matinees, over two consecutive weekends. This year, they’re at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Dec. 18-19 and at 2 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 19. Tickets to the first weekend shows are sold out.

Venue: Friends University’s Riney Fine Arts Center, Sebits Auditorium

Director: Stan Rogers, director of ballet at Friends University

Audience size: 2,838 people over six performances

The cast: The cast is made up of Friends University’s 23 dance majors, who are required to participate in every Friends production. It also includes about 50 children from dance programs across the area, including Rogers Ballet Inc., Kansas Dance Academy, Midwest Dance Mechanix and Kingman Dance Center. The tiny dancers portray mice, soldiers, gingerbread cookies, candy canes and party children. The cast also includes a few community members, who appear as parents at the opening party scene, and local boys – often cast members’ little brothers – who portray the rascally party boys.

Professionals: The Friends Nutcracker always features big-city professionals dancing the roles of Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. This year, Denver Ballet’s Chandra Kuykendall and Domenico Luciano will appear on the first weekend, and New York City Ballet’s Teresa Reichlen and Tyler Angle will appear on the second weekend. The Koch Foundation sponsors the professionals’ visits.

“They bring something that is completely professional, and they’re even in the studios with the kids warming up and practicing,” Rogers said.

Clara: The coveted role of Clara always goes to one of the young dancers who auditions for parts, and Rogers likes for his Clara to look like a child. Usually, the role goes to a girl age 10 or younger, and that dancer does not perform in point shoes. “It’s a children’s ballet, really, so she should be younger than Fritz (Clara’s brother),” Rogers said. “They’re usually 8 or 9 years old, and they’re not ready to dance on point.” This year’s Clara is Karissa Worthington from Midwest Dance Mechanix, who also is a student at Sunflower Elementary.

Costumes: Former Wichitan Charla Sanderson, daughter of famous Wichita painter Charles Sanderson, designed the costumes for Friends’ production when it first began. Many have been remade since then with her designs, which feature fuzzy mice with hoods and colorful tuxedo jackets, rhinestone-studded tutus, vintage party dresses, full snowflake skirts that deliver maximum spin, and a whimsical, colorful Mother Ginger tent dress.

Music: Rogers uses recorded music for his “Nutcracker,” which he thinks is the better way for a small ballet company to present Tchaikovsky’s score, he said. “A lot of smaller companies, if they do have the orchestra, it’s a cut down orchestra, and it doesn’t have the fullness of the beauty of the music in its original form,” he said. “And our orchestra pit is not big enough to put an orchestra in it.”

Preparation: Rogers gets the show together in six weeks. Auditions are in September, and rehearsals start on the last weekend in October.

Signature scenes: Friends’ snow scene, which showcases older dancers in dramatic, twirling skirts moving on and off the stage, also features thick, falling snow that’s made out of a plastic, almost trash bag-like material purchased at a theater supply store. Friends employs the party parents from the first act to sprinkle the snow from giant bags on the overhead catwalks. And with the dim blue lighting, the effect is quite dramatic.

People also love Friends’ “Mother Ginger” scene, which features a male, stilt-walking dancer in full face paint and a bonnet lumbering onto the stage only to have several little gingerbread cookies escape from under her skirt to dance. Friends’ expressive Mother Ginger always famously flirts with the audience members and instructs them to “call me” before disappearing backstage.

Trivia: One of Friends’ other famous scenes stars two life-sized dolls who appear at the party and move with perfect mechanical stiffness. Rogers borrows a track from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” for the scene.

Ticket prices: $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and students. Available at friends.edu/finearts or by calling the Fine Arts Box Office at 316-295-5677.

Number of years running: 42

Performances: Ballet Wichita offers two main performances, at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. It also offered four abbreviated weekday shows earlier in the week for about 5,600 schoolchildren, a senior show for about 500, and a traveling show, which was Dec. 6 in Junction City.

Venue: Century II Concert Hall, 225 W. Douglas

Director: Jill Landrith

Audience size: 4,200 people for two main performances

The cast: Ballet Wichita’s cast has 147 dancers in it, and the younger dancers are split up into two casts that take turns performing to avoid fatigue during the company’s eight-show run. Dancers must be at least 8 years old to audition, and children come from schools across the area, including Newton, Hesston, Clearwater and Hutchinson. The show also features college-age dancers from schools like Wichita State University and Newman. Some also are college graduates who return to perform.

Professionals: Lindsey Croop and Jorge Villarini from the Dance Theatre of Harlem will perform the roles of the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier. The Snow King and Queen roles will be danced by local pros: Kalina Bartlett, a Wichita State graduate who dances professionally in St. Louis, and Aaron Craven, a Wichita State grad who dances with Music Theatre Wichita.

Clara: Ballet Wichita’s Claras are older – usually between ages 11 and 13 – and they dance on point. Landrith casts two Claras, who take turns performing. This year, they are Emma Boyle, an eighth-grader at Central Christian Academy who has been dancing at the Wichita Children’s Theatre & Dance Center for 10 years, and Alex Owens, a seventh-grader at Wichita Collegiate School who trains at the Jill Landrith School of Dance. It’s her second year performing as Clara.

Costumes: Ballet Wichita has a massive costume closet, Landrith said, she she likes to switch out and change up costumes each year to keep the show fresh. Sometimes, she envisions costumes in her mind, draws pictures and asks her costumer to create them. Landrith, who has costume design experience herself, also tries to make one each year. Some of the show’s more notable costumes are the whirling gowns worn by the dancing parents at the opening Christmas party, the costume worn by a dancing rat – complete with a tail that swings during pirouettes, and a blue butterfly costume that floats across the stage during the “Waltz of the Flowers” in the second act.

“Because we’ve been around for so long, sometimes we retire them for a few years or create new ones,” Landrith said. “We keep quite an extensive costume collection on hand so I can say, ‘Let’s use this set of costumes this year.’ ”

Music: The cast performs to music from a live orchestra during its main weekend performances.

Preparation: Auditions are the last Sunday in August, and the cast begins rehearsal during the second week of September. Because there are so many dancers, the cast rehearses several days out of the week and extensively on weekends, Landrith said.

Signature scenes: Ballet Wichita’s opening party scene is extra lively, and the children at the party perform advanced moves on point. (The party boys also are portrayed by female dancers.) And the fight between the soldiers and mice in the first act includes edible weaponry like candy canes.

Trivia: Landrith’s mother, June Landrith, was the first artistic director for Metropolitan Ballet, which later became Ballet Wichita, and Jill Landrith took over in 1997. She first performed in the Metropolitan Ballet’s “Nutcracker” as a small child, dancing as a mouse. “I danced everything except for Clara because I was such an ill-behaved child,” she said with a laugh.

Ticket prices: Tickets range from $19.80 to $49.50 and are available at www.wichitatix.com or by calling 316-303-8100.