In ‘Nutcracker’ We Trust : For ballet companies, the real magic of the most popular and most performed ballet in the U.S. is the money it generates

It’s a 100-year-old Russian ballet that has become as American as family values--the tale of a little girl and her soldier doll. Clara falls asleep on Christmas Eve and dreams of a battle with a Mouse King, followed by an escape to a candy-coated fantasyland of snowflakes, dancing dolls and sugarplums. Her wooden soldier, meanwhile, has vanquished the rodent and been transformed into a handsome prince.

The ballet is “The Nutcracker,” first choreographed by Lev Ivanov to music by Pyotor Ilich Tchaikovsky for St. Petersburg’s Kirov Ballet. It represents the only ballet many audiences will ever see.

In the United States, more than 230 productions of the ballet will be danced--with an expected draw of nearly $46 million in box-office revenue--during “Nutcracker’s” 100th-anniversary year, according to Dance Magazine.

“I’ve been doing it so many years now, it’s really part of my holiday season,” said San Francisco Ballet principal dancer and veteran Sugarplum Fairy Evelyn Cisneros. “We initially think, ‘Well, it’s sort of a drag, because we do it every season, so many years in a row.’ But for me, what makes it worthwhile are the children . . . when you see the light in their eyes, and their fascination at the magic of the theater.”

But for ballet companies nationwide, it’s not just magic, but money, that makes “The Nutcracker” sweet.

While the Christmas ballet never won wide popularity in Russia, dance observers say it has ranked as the favorite here since the late George Balanchine, veteran of the Kirov, created a new version for New York City Ballet in 1954. Local theater impresario James A. Doolittle recalls booking that production into Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre in the late 1950s and early ‘60s in the dead of summer because the Christmas dates were taken by New York--and all the performances sold out. “It was really a sensation,” he recalled.

For many American companies, an annual “Nutcracker” is the key to survival. While the main boon is ticket sales, the ballet also draws corporate donors eager to associate their name with wholesome family fun. And, because the ballet offers roles of varying difficulty--from challenging solos down to slots in the mouse army--it provides a first exposure to performing for young dancers, and can lure tuition-paying students into company-affiliated ballet schools.

According to a survey in 1991 by Dance/USA, a Washington-based national service organization for professional dance, “Nutcracker” revenues average 40% of annual income for companies that perform the ballet. (The organization’s figures are based on a sample of its 100 member companies, which have annual budgets ranging from $1 million to $15 million.) As a rule, the smaller the company, the bigger the percentage.

Audiences are fairly indiscriminate, admits Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Company, which has booked “Nutcrackers” from the Joffrey Ballet, the Los Angeles Classical Ballet and, this year, the Kirov Ballet, into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “(This year) we had lots of calls saying, ‘We want to buy tickets to a “Nutcracker,” are you doing one?’ Any ‘Nutcracker,’ ” she said.

Obviously, the most lucrative productions take place in the companies’ home cities, where no travel expenses are incurred. Touring shows are more often money-makers for the facilities that present them. The hottest “Nutcracker” dates, company directors add, are Dec. 1-30, with interest flat before Thanksgiving and after the New Year--leading to stiff competition from other touring companies and from local groups seeking the same performance spaces.

“For us (“Nutcracker”) is important, but it’s not the cash cow that it is for many companies, and that’s really because we don’t have a home theater where we can run five or six weeks straight,” said C. C. Conner, executive director of the Joffrey Ballet. The Joffrey used to perform “Nutcracker” at New York’s City Center, but last year could only secure pre-Thanksgiving dates, which resulted in a huge loss for the company. This year, the New York-based Joffrey will not perform “Nutcracker” in the city it calls home. But the company continues to tour its production, performing in Minneapolis through this weekend and opening Wednesday at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

Principal dancers from major companies often make a tidy holiday profit from “guesting” in lead “Nutcracker” roles with regional ballet companies or dance school productions. Besides her five to eight annual “Nutcracker” performances with the San Francisco Ballet, Cisneros said she usually guests in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, for 14 more “Nutcrackers,” each paying between $1,000 and $2,000 per performance.

“It enabled me to buy a house, over many years of guesting,” Cisneros said. “It also subsidizes us, because at the San Francisco Ballet we have a 40-week year. So we are laid off--that’s on the unemployment line--12 weeks a year.”

American Ballet Theater executive director Gary Dunning rues the fact that his company, now struggling under a $5.7-million debt, currently has no “Nutcracker,” since finances caused it to cancel staging a new production last year.

For years, the company earned 12% to 13% of its income from a “Nutcracker” choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov. But in May, 1989, a dispute with then-Executive Director Jane Hermann caused Baryshnikov to quit as ABT’s artistic director and he took the performing rights to his “Nutcracker” with him.

“If you were to talk about any single gift from a donor, and it comprised 10% on up, obviously it is something you would pay great attention to,” Dunning said. “If you make the analogy that the ‘Nutcracker’ is akin to a donor, it would be by far your largest source for the year, no matter what size you are.”

The ballet’s 100th anniversary has led to more intense attention than usual. Columbus, Ohio’s BalletMet, for example, is restaging “Nutcracker” in the style of Imperial Russia, circa 1892, under a grant from Nationwide Insurance Co.--and trucking the entire show to Anchorage, Alaska, a new addition to its touring schedule. The Los Angeles Classical Ballet (formerly Long Beach Ballet) is touting its 10th anniversary in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of “Nutcracker.”

Perhaps coincidental to the 100th, New York City Ballet recently completed a theatrical film version of “Nutcracker,” starring Macaulay Culkin, to be released for Christmas, 1993.

And, in a splashy joint effort, the Los Angeles Music Center and the Orange County Performing Arts Center have brought in the company for which the holiday ballet was originally created--the Kirov, in the troupe’s first-ever U.S. “Nutcracker” engagement. The company completes its week-long Orange County engagement today and comes to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Dec. 22-Jan. 3. In Orange County, all seven Kirov performances in the center’s 3,000-seat auditorium sold out.

The Music Center’s Kimberling observed that the Kirov deal was plagued with problems from the outset. Number one, the Kirov was leery because of a 50% shortfall in expected ticket sales when the company came to Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium last May just after the riots.

And, shortly before the company was to sign with the Music Center, Kirov engagements in Vancouver and Mexico City were canceled, threatening the tour and idling the company for two weeks in Orange County before the Los Angeles engagement--ironically, with not much to do but spend rubles at South Coast Plaza during what would probably have been the most lucrative performance dates. A full holiday concert schedule made it impossible for the Orange County facility to extend its Kirov dates and L.A. Philharmonic concerts preclude starting the Music Center engagement any sooner. (Complicating the Music Center dates are the county’s all-day Christmas Eve program and the traditional New Year’s Eve Philharmonic concert, which will both interrupt the Kirov engagement.)

Kimberling said that a last-minute hunt for another site to fill the Kirov’s two-week hiatus proved fruitless because other centers were already booked, too. Even though some were eager to host a powerhouse company like the Kirov, Kimberling said “gentlemen’s agreements” usually keep prestigious companies from ousting smaller “Nutcrackers” after deals are already made.

Meanwhile, the Joffrey--a former resident company of the Music Center--was also negotiating for a 1992 “Nutcracker” season there, but dropped out in February because it was unable to pay guarantees required by the center. (The Joffrey performed there last year as a non-resident company.) The Los Angeles Classical Ballet had even earlier angled for a “Nutcracker” slot at the Music Center, but instead ended up at the Pasadena Civic, along with its long-standing engagement at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach.

Kimberling said that the Music Center and the Orange County Performing Arts Center each kicked in half of the $100,000 cost of food and lodging for the 167 members of the Kirov company, orchestra and entourage during their downtime. She added that the Music Center, the Kirov, tour producer SATRA International and backer James A. Doolittle of Los Angeles Theater International all subsidized costs.

The total cost of the Los Angeles engagement is $1.3 million, she said, and each performance must be 78% sold out to break even. While ticket sales began slowly because the late booking caused delays in the promotional campaign, a Music Center representative said that as of last Monday, advance sales were “going fine” and predicted at least 80% of the 3,300-seat Dorothy Chandler would be filled for each performance.

So the “Nutcracker” is good business--but is it good ballet? While presenters wax sentimental over its charms, Tim Scholl, Mount Holyoke college assistant professor of Russian, dance historian, author of “Apollo in St. Petersburg: Classical Revival in Modern Ballet” and honorary Scrooge, begs to differ.

In an essay written for this year’s New York City Ballet “Nutcracker” program, Scholl points out that St. Petersburg critics were not enchanted by the 1892 premiere in Moscow. They were troubled that many lead roles were for children, also numbed by lengthy exposition and deeply annoyed that the season’s visiting Italian ballerina, Antonietta Dell’Era, didn’t show up until the second act (which, due to late curtain times in that era and locale, was well after 11:30 p.m.).

Scholl’s own opinion of the ultimate Christmas ballet, is, well, humbug. “Is it a good ballet? It’s a question any respectable dance historian wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole,” he said pleasantly during a recent phone interview.

“From the standpoint of people who go to a lot of ballet, they hate it. We all know why. Nothing happens in the first act. There’s a lot in the second act, but you have to wait through this horrible Christmas party, so it’s sort of a snooze from the perspective of people who love dance.

“And, structurally, it’s a nightmare. And there isn’t any really good motivation in this ballet for the plot. It’s not like ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ say, where you have a pinprick, which leads into a vision scene, and ends up with a great wedding at the end. It’s just this sort of dream sequence. So for a Christmas bauble it’s really perfect, and certainly people in America have no problem with it. But as a ballet . . . it’s just a little odd.”