By Paul Horsley

Devon Carney, who began as KC Ballet’s new artistic director in July, has made some tweaks to Todd Bolender’s Nutcracker for 2013, though most of the changes will be unnoticeable to all but the most seasoned KCB fans. “I really don’t want to fool around with Todd’s production too much,” says the former Boston Ballet principal dancer, who was previously associate AD for Cincinnati Ballet. “Certainly I’ve done a few adjustments, that’s what I’d call them. And I think the program notes are going to say something like ‘additional choreography by Devon Carney.’ Because there are a couple of little things here or there that I do want to change, and I don’t want to do that without making it clear that something’s been done.”

Todd’s production is more than 40 years old, but through the years many a hand has helped freshen up the holiday classic, which runs at the Kauffman Center from December 7th through the 24th. An altered variation here, a structural tweak there, even a celebrity supernumerary now and then. Todd himself reconfigured the choreography along the way, as did others, and in the 1990s the company unveiled new scenic designs. There’s life in the ole girl yet: But there’s also a good chance we won’t be seeing it for much longer.

Recently we chatted with Devon about Nutcracker and about his first months as KC Ballet’s artistic director.

Paul: How would you characterize this Nutcracker in terms of the Nutcrackers you’ve seen around the US and the world? Are there similarities to the Boston Ballet Nutcracker you knew as a dancer there, or to the Cincinnati Nutcracker you worked with? Where does it fit into to the whole picture, and into the trajectory of your career?

Devon: Nutcracker has always been my life, which any dancer who’s been in a professional situation can say. It’s now almost 40 years that I’ve been involved in some sort of Nutcracker. So you know there’s a lot time, a lot of Nutcrackers under the bridge.

So you were seven when you did your first Nutcracker!?

Yeah, that’s right, that is mathematically perfect.

What was your first role in that production?

Oh, you really want to know? Okay! Because my first role was the bug that bit me and made me want to be a dancer. … I had been dancing, I’d been taking classes for a couple of months, and they asked me if I wanted to do a role in Nutcracker. And it was pretty much a walk-on, a reindeer pulling the sleigh in that (New Orleans) production. And oh my goodness, it was such fun. The live performance is very addictive: the audience, the applause, the live music. At that time the New Orleans Symphony was up and going and had been in the pit for New Orleans Ballet, and to hear the full orchestral music … It’s a really big musical moment during the Snow Scene (I was in), a culmination of where they’re going. … And there is this huge music, and the lights and the costumes and the applause. … That was my first performance: being a reindeer, with the antlers and the bells and the fur, lots of feather fur all over. It was quite a fun experience. And things just took off from there. Literally it was like love at first sight. I’ll never forget that moment.

Were you good? Did you perform capably?

I think so. I loved it. The worst thing was, I’m a very active individual and back then was probably even more so than I am now, and the hardest thing was getting me to sit still. So the perfect thing to do was to be dancing, being a reindeer, moving around the stage, and prancing and pawing at the snow, and whatever. … It was a blast.

Nutcrackers in general pretty much follow a story line. Unless you get Mark Morris – and even Mark Morris follows the same story pretty much – it’s about Clara and her mischievous little brother and a Nutcracker doll that’s presented to her. And it’s broken, and then Drosselmeyer fixes it, and the Nutcracker Prince grows and then we have a battle with good and evil and the Nutcracker fighting in a soldier-type format: You know, still wooden, stiff … fighting the Mouse King. And the Nutcracker Prince is victorious and he is transformed into a Prince, and off they go to the Snow Scene and the Land of the Sweets and then she goes home. The story (stays the same) because it comes from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story, so everybody’s drawing from the same story.

That’s pretty good! You very nearly did a 25-words-or-less synopsis of the Nutcracker! Nicely concise. But to come back to KCB, now that you’re seeing and rehearsing this Nutcracker, are you seeing flashes of familiarity with Balanchine things you’ve seen before?

Well, the production in Boston was not a Balanchine Nutcracker. It was a Balanchine company but it did not do George Balanchine’s version. But there are companies that do Balanchine’s production, and this one is about as close to being a Balanchine production as possible, without actually calling it such.

How does this version fit into Nutcrackers around the country. Does it seem “old school,” “let’s move on”? Or does it still feel fresh to you?

Well I’m still getting to know it. I have been in situations where there are pretty spicy and very fresh productions, as in Cincinnati: While I was there they had two. When I was in Boston we had at least three different versions of it. This version is going on 41 years old, so there is a bit of datedness in the production. It’s all about getting the dancers to make it as bright and new and fresh as possible: Because a lot of the dancers are themselves new and fresh, and that’s what makes the difference each year in a production that’s been going on for many years. … The last time the scenery was re-done was something like 15 years ago, so something new and different will be coming along in a couple of years.

Before we get to that, what are some of the more overt changes that you’ve tried to instigate in this season’s Nutcracker already, things that are notable but that the audience might not notice or be aware of?

I would say one of the important things is that I really don’t want to fool around with Todd’s production too much. Certainly I’ve done a few adjustments, that’s what I’d call them, and I think the program notes are going to say, “choreographic additions,” or “additional choreography by Devon Carney,” because there are a couple of little things here or there that I do want to change, but I don’t want to do that without making it clear that something’s been done. That wouldn’t be fair.

Even though realistically speaking not many people would notice anyway, perhaps?

No, I don’t think they would. But one of the largest things is, I’m not a big fan of what’s called the Nephew of Drosselmeyer, so he’s no longer in the production.

Wow, the Nephew just disappeared! (Laughter)

He has been [replaced] by the Nutcracker Prince, because that’s something I feel is more of a dramatic line from start to finish: She is given the Nutcracker Doll, which grows into the Nutcracker Life-Size Doll – who battles the bad guys – and then he transforms into the Nutcracker Prince, and he takes her off to the Land to the Snow and Land of Sweets. So she has this consistent character with her the whole time. I’m not a big fan of the Nephew. I’ve seen other productions with the Nephew in them, too, but it doesn’t make any sense.

That is drawn from the Balanchine, which I think he brought with him from Russia. So on the one hand it’s nice to have a cute kid do the famous Pantomime, but on the other hand … and I’ll let you finish that sentence …

But on the other hand you want somebody to do the Pantomime who can make it convincing. And that’s the difficulty of having a 12-year-old boy doing this extremely complex storytelling in Act 2. It’s a very extensive amount of discussion of what happened … in the battle between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The nice thing is, when you have a Nutcracker Prince who did actually do the battle, the audience is like, “Oh right, that’s the guy who stabbed the Mouse with the sword!” I’m just trying to make it as straightforward as possible, and create a clarity in the story line.

Now I’m sure there are going to be more things to work on, but in the limited time I’ve had to work on things, that was sort of the biggest thing. I just get really lost with the Nephew, so it was important that I kind of refined the idea a little bit.

So we see the same dancer in the Nutcracker uniform become the Prince.

Right, so you have a consistent person, and he gets humanized when he loses his Nutcracker Head, which is taken off onstage in a way that hopefully nobody sees it. It’s taken off and he stands up and there he is, this handsome Prince.

Oh so you DON’T want people to see the head coming off?

Right, I thought that would be too shocking for children. It’s like if you were to pull off Pluto’s head …

… and he’s actually Mickey.

(Laughs) You just don’t do that … The head is removed but he keeps that costume on – the costume that he wears through the battle, and into the land of snow and into the Second Act. …

We’re making a brand-new costume (that will serve both functions). It looks really nice: red velour velvet and blue cuffs and gold braids, very much that sort of iconic “soldier look,” with the epaulettes and so on. So he’ll have that Prince look. And of course we’re dealing with a company dancer now, so he will carry himself more like a Prince.

Would there ever be a time when there would not be a Clara that is a student?

I don’t go for that. There are other companies that have Clara done by a company dancer, but … that’s messing with danger. (Laughs) That’s sacrilege. It just has to be a young girl from the school.

I picture an angry mob of mothers with torches.

Oh, can you imagine?

In Cincinnati we went through a period where there was no (girl) Clara. Clara was a professional dancer, a shorter girl who was acting like a teenager. And her name was Marie, she wasn’t Clara. And Marie goes off to the battle scene, and Marie goes off into the Land of Snow, and she dances with the Nutcracker Prince, and she and the Prince go to the Land of Sweets and they do the Grand Pas. I’m not a fan of that one either, so you’ll never see that version from me.  

To come back to Mark Morris, because he is someone you said this summer you admire greatly and who has had an influence on you. I was wondering whether his “Hard Nut” will ultimately be part of your Nutcracker when you create it? And beyond that, what influence do you think his version has had on everybody’s conception of what The Nutcracker is or could be?

Mark Morris! I would say that his Nutcracker takes it to the extreme and says, “Nothing’s safe in the dance world, not even Nutcracker!” That’s one thing Mark was doing: He was poking fun of the whole Nutcracker tradition and all that. But he’s Mark Morris and he can get away with it. He doesn’t have to worry about ticket sales, or that a Nutcracker has to appeal to a broad audience of families. And his Nutcracker does not appeal to families, it’s an adult-themed Nutcracker, and you just can’t do that.

It’s had some longevity, though.

Oh yeah, definitely, because it was the first of its kind. Nobody dreamed, or dared to dream, of displacing this. But if we replaced our Nutcracker with that? Gosh, can you imagine?

There is a rather irreverent Nutcracker done here by former KCB dancer Jennifer Owen and her Owen/Cox Dance Company, which I would recommend seeing.  

They are the cover of KC Studio right? I saw that and I thought, that’s cool. That’s Owen/Cox’s kind of thing, you know. They’re in a position where they can do that, and they can have a blast. Just really go way outside the box.

So how about the timing of your Nutcracker? We talked this summer about how soon you thought that would happen. Do you think we could talk 2014? 2015?

Because I want to do it right, I don’t want to do it next year. When this comes along … I want it to be a high-quality production with good designers involved, with time to really craft it appropriately – for one of the better professional ballet companies in this country. It’s not something you rush into, any full-length ballet, you just don’t. And if you do, you’re going to get shoddy workmanship. You’re just not going to get the best possible product out there.

Is fundraising part of the process?  

Oh certainly, but we’re feeling that we’re way more than half-way on that right now.

So donors are with you? “Yeah, we love this thing but it’s time to move on”?

I would say so, certainly. But we will be continuing to pursue more funds, and we want to make sure it’s paid for before it opens. We don’t want to be fiscally irresponsible in something like this. If it takes three years, then it takes three years instead of two, but we’re going to do it right.

Do you think your Nutcracker will have elements of the current local Nutcracker, or of past productions that you’ve know? Or do you want to take as fresh an approach as possible?

I would say the latter. … I want it to be as fresh as possible and unique and individual for our city. … There’s so much in the Nutcracker score that it’s so inviting.  

Do you think the Nutcracker you’d create would be surprising to Tchaikovsky or indeed Petipa if they were to see it?

It’s a great question. Because I think the way they did it back then … would probably be way more foreign to us than anything that’s going on today – in comparison to what it was when it was when it was written. I think they’d probably say (of today’s versions), “Gosh that’s a lot different from what I envisioned.”

To narrow that somewhat, do you think your Nutcracker as you envision it would be shocking to someone like Balanchine?

No, I don’t think so. I would not go for shock value. I want to go for fun family entertainment that just gets everybody in the holiday spirit. We all have a good time and kids walk out of the theater saying, “Jeez, I want to be a dancer some day.” Or just, “I had a good time, Mommy, thank you.”

And if anything, the finale that you created for the last KCB program (“Opus 1”) communicated to me: “Let’s look back at the idea of the big ballet, the big presentational scenes,” and I suspect we may see some of that sort of presentational style in your Nutcracker, rather than “Let’s make it into some sort of modern dance kind of thing.”

Right. Oh, absolutely, for sure.

I anticipate when you unveil your Nutcracker there’s going to be a lot of excitement and interest. It will be exciting, but then at the end you say, Oh gosh, now we’ve got to do this for the next 20 years. So let’s hope it has that durability, too.

Yes exactly, the nice thing about doing a Nutcracker is that, as the years go by you’re constantly sort of adjusting it a little bit.

What role are the KCB II dancers playing in this year’s Nutcracker?

They’re doing Snow, Flowers, corps … one of the Buffoons. They’ll be Party Scene guests, Spanish corps, all of the support roles. That’s where they are now.

There’s one other Nutcracker-related item I should mention. I’m not sure how many people would actually notice this, but I know I will. One of the things that is very difficult for me when I’ve gone to the New York City Ballet and watched their Balanchine Nutcracker, there’s this cadenza that’s in there, this solo violin music. That music is not Nutcracker, it’s Sleeping Beauty. That’s something that was added into the score (by Balanchine). So we fixed that. Drosselmeyer still repairs the Nutcracker doll, it just happens at the end of the Party Scene. So you still get the point across.

I know that (KCB Music Director Ramona Pansegrau) is not a big fan of that solo either. Ever since I saw City Ballet’s version I thought, What is that music? What is it doing here? And it’s an energy vacuum, it’s a black hole. It just kills the energy that’s being built at the end of the Party Scene. You know, we’re heading into the creepy mice, and we get this violin solo. It just doesn’t make any sense, that’s just me personally. That isn’t part of Nutcracker. Now those who grew up with Balanchine’s Nutcracker will say that is a part of it, and that’s true (for them). But we’re not doing Balanchine’s Nutcracker. 

The Ballet’s Nutcracker runs December 7th through the 24th. Call 816-931-2232 or go to kcballet.org.

Paul can be reached at phorsley@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook (paul.horsley.501).

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