Back to Guides

The Nutcracker and The Tale of The Hard Nut

The Tacoma City Ballet busts out a prequel to the popular holiday ballet

A scene from a past performance of Tacoma City Ballet's "The Nutcracker." Photo courtesy of Tacoma City Ballet

Recommend Article
Total Recommendations (0)
Clip Article Email Article Print Article Share Article

Not every ballet gets an entire year of treasure hunts and anticipation before it debuts. But The Nutcracker and The Tale of The Hard Nut is no ordinary ballet. This year, the show will grace the stage of the Pantages Theater for the first time.

Each year, the Tacoma City Ballet performs the classic two-act holiday ballet - The Nutcracker. The tale is familiar to many. Originally adapted from a story by E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nutcracker tells the story of a young girl named Clara who takes a liking to a toy nutcracker doll. The clock strikes midnight, the doll magically becomes life size, and it leads Clara on a fantastical adventure. There are fighting mice. There is a Sugar Plum Fairy. There's a prince. It is indubitably 100 percent holiday magic.

But why is there a nutcracker in the first place? Yeah, bet you never thought of that. What exactly is going on here? No one knows and no one questions. We all just show up each year and accept the mystery of a magical nutcracker. Turns out, there are actually answers to this mystery.

"The Tale of the Hard Nut is a prequel that explains why we have a nutcracker," said Erin Ceragioli, artistic director at the Tacoma City Ballet. "I have acts one and two, which everyone has seen. To that I'm adding the prequel, so you're going to see the story go as it should have, with the prequel starting with why we have the nutcracker. It's kind of like getting a new friend, but keeping the old one at the same time."

This makes The Nutcracker a three-act, full-length ballet. But don't worry about fussy kids and a long show. Even with its expanded content, this new and improved Nutcracker will be less than 2.5 hours, with the prequel portion only adding 19 minutes to the show. Along with Ceragioli's artistic direction, the show will be accompanied by the Northwest Sinfonietta and Stadium High School Women's Concert Choir.

To stir up fervor for the big show, Ceragioli came up with not one but two treasure hunts that ran for the better part of 2013. Starting in January 2013, the Tacoma City Ballet kicked off the Krakatut Nut Treasure Hunt. In March, a second treasure hunt called Mouse of the Month joined the fun.

"We went to various businesses to partner with us," Ceragioli said. "There were tons of people out searching. The highlight of the search for me was being able to involve the community with the ballet, but also being able to do something for the businesses by generating business and getting people to go to new places."

Businesses that participated in the search for the Krakatut Nut have ranged from Corina Bakery to Europa Grill, from The Hub to Grassi's Flowers and Gifts.

"We had two nuts hidden for the February search," said sweet pea Flaherty, owner of King's Books. "When I arrived that day, there were about six people waiting outside the bookstore ready to search for nuts. We had them hidden on shelves in the bookstore, not behind books (because I didn't want people to tear up the bookstore), but on random shelves. It took the finders less than 10 minutes to find them. They were quite jubilant."

Corina Bakery also had people waiting for the business to open. The early birds get the nuts in this case.

"We were happy to host this hunt for the Krakatut Nut," said Corina owner Molly Ott. "There was a lot of excitement exuded by those who found it, one of which was our first customer of the day who was waiting on the sidewalk for us to open."

The Nutcracker and The Tale of The Hard Nut, 3 p.m. Dec. 7-8, 14-15 and 21-22, Pantages Theater, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, $20-$60, 253.591.5894

comments powered by Disqus

Site Search