NYCB Vol. 13 No. 44 & 45 - Nutcracker

Photo by Martha Swope

[44/50] Counting down 50 NYCB Nutcrackers this year with stories from NYCB dancers past and present! Today we hear from David Richardson who danced the Prince in the 1950s, danced with the company as an adult, and was in charge of the children’s

“David Richardson, a member of the New York City Ballet since 1962 and himself the little Prince in Nutcracker as a thirteen-year-old ballet student at the school, has been in charge of selecting and rehearsing the SAB children for over ten years. It is a job he performs with a patience and sensitivity that has endeared him to every child at the school.

“A tall, lithe man with observant eyes and a warm smile, Richardson maintains that mounting the yearly Nutcracker is, at best, a vast undertaking. In addition to principal dancers, soloists, and a full corps de ballet, the production requires ninety children (the ballet employs two separate casts of 45 children each), and it falls to Richardson to engineer the subtle mechanics of turning very young students into at least momentary professionals.

"People often ask me, 'How can you stand it?' " says Richardson with a laugh. ‘I tell them that I enjoy working with children, because these are children who are doing what they want to do, and it makes the job that much easier. Of course, it's hard work, because I strive for perfection, but the children are so willing to give of their best that it becomes a sort of mutual feast.

"But about Nutcracker. It goes without saying that all the children at SAB know about it and all of them want to be in it. School starts in mid-September and the audition notice goes up the end of October, which gets everyone very excited. Well, the very first thing I do is go around to all the children's classes and watch them work. This is a way of seeing the children under unpressured circumstances, and I make some mental notes, but it's more of a general survey of what I'll have to work with.

"Next I personally hand-pick the two little boys and two little girls who will alternate as the Prince and Princess—major roles in the ballet. When I have chosen them, I like Mr. Balanchine to look at them. Marie, the little Princess, is usually ten years old, and Mr. B. likes her to be a lively little girl. She must have a feminine quality—a delicacy which will suggest both her liveliness and her vulnerability... and just a touch of budding sensuality, because she must be drawn to the little Prince. So it must be a child with a good imagination. The Prince must possess a regal quality and he, too, must project a variety of subtle emotions. Once the Prince and Princess are cast we go on to the auditions."

“As David Richardson describes it, the day of the Nutcracker auditions is nothing if not tense and filled with all sorts of small traumas. It is a day of rapid rejections, tears as well as loud and joyful squeals of happiness. ‘It all starts with a huge number of children plus their parents,’ says Richardson. ‘At one point, I call everyone together and I begin by making a speech to the parents. I tell them that the reason their children are in the school in the first place is because SAB considers them to have potential as future dancers-whether they get into Nutcracker or not. I explain to them that if their child is rejected it's not because they lack talent, but because they are probably too tall, and that the whole charm of Nutcracker depends on seeing a lot of little people on the stage. It's usually the littlest children who get into the production.

“‘I then talk to the children and tell them to soothe their parents if they are not chosen, because the parents also feel rejected. You see, if a child gets into Nutcracker it's a big holiday spirit in every way-for the parents, too, because they're going to be totally involved with this during the month of December.’ The Nutcracker auditions are held in a large SAB studio in which, as David Richardson puts it, no parent is allowed to set foot.

“Richardson first looks at the second division children, all of whom will automatically appear in the ballet. He decides on who will be little soldiers, angels, bunny rabbits, trumpeters, and sentries. Two casts are selected —cast A and cast B-which will account for thirty-eight children. This over, he calls for the girls in the third division-the ten-year-olds-who must pass the audition. In groups of four, they are asked to execute echappés, pas de chats, passés, and changements, and Richardson gauges their technical ability and sense of coordination. The fourth and fifth division girls are given more difficult steps, as their dances will be more complex.

“‘I look at the boys next. They are mainly used in the Act I party scene, and I must choose fourteen of them, as well as two little boys who will play Marie's naughty brother Fritz. The boys don't require any true dancing, but they must be well coordinated. I ask them to skip. If they can't skip, they're automatically rejected. If I see a boy can learn to skip, I give him a chance.’

“'The first children I cast are the Polichinelles, who dance in the Mother Ginger variation of Act II. Their dance is the most difficult in the ballet, and they must have genuine technical facility. I next pick the children for the party scene. The boys must be slightly taller than the girls. Next come the grey mice. There are eight of them, which means sixteen more children to have to be chosen.’

“‘After that, I pick the girls for the Hoop Dance-the Candy Canes another sixteen girls. With that, my whole cast has been assembled, and the auditions are over."

Richardson then calls the accepted children together and tells them that they must be prepared for intensive daily rehearsals, which will follow their regular ballet classes and run from 3:30-7:30 p.m. for the entire month of November. They are then handed a parental consent form, which must be signed, as well as a rehearsal and performance schedule.

“‘I start out the rehearsals very quietly— no tension. I want the children to be comfortable and to get used to me. I begin by teaching the Polichinelles dance. Then I move on to the party scene, which is hard to teach because it involves a great deal of pantomime. You see, a little boy or girl will do a step-just a step-aside and a bow or a curtsy— but it must be done well. I show the children how to hold their heads and how to project a sense of formality and politeness, something they're not used to. Very rarely do you find a little boy or girl who will respond to each other in this manner. They ignore each other and just do the steps. So, it's also about teaching them to communicate while they're dancing-to have fun with the dances, but also to respond to each.

"Probably the hardest thing about staging the party scene is to make the children respond to the grown-up dancers who will portray their parents. You see, they're dealing with blank spaces during most of the rehearsals because the company dancers don't come in until quite a bit later. It's always a shock to the kids when they're actually faced with the grown-ups, and I always make it a point to tell the dancers in the company not to become lazy at that point because the children need them--depend on them--to help.'

"Another shock is that Mr. Balanchine comes in to look at the last couple of rehearsals. He'll watch the party scene and often he’ll find little things he wants to change or improve. Mr. B. will also come to the stage rehearsal, and if he cleverly finds yet other things to add, they have to be taught within a day—so that's a bit hard on the kids. Still, it all gets done and, by the end of the rehearsals, all the children know exactly what they're supposed to do—and they do it just beautifully.

As the two casts of ninety children are put through their rigorous paces by David Richardson, they also are kept busy with costume fittings, shoe fittings, and their regular ballet classes. But as the day nears for the first official performance of The Nutcracker, the excitement mounts. The thrill of appearing on the stage of the New York State Theater with the New York City Ballet becomes headspinning. For most of the children, it will be their first taste of performing before a live audience, and a sense of accomplishment and euphoria overtakes them.

"The children get terribly excited and we have to slow them down because, the minute they get to the theater, their tendency is to become hyperactive. So we have very strict rules about their behavior backstage or in the dressing rooms. They have to be quiet and not run around. In fact, a sheet is handed out which gives them a set of rules they must follow. For example, the girls are not allowed to wear jewelry on stage, their hair has to be combed just so, and there are regulations about make-up. Every child must know exactly when to be at the theater and must be on call even if not scheduled to perform. That's done in case one of the performing children falls ill or inadvertently forgets to show up. There are rules about parents, friends, brothers, and sisters who accompany the children to the theater and wait to take them home.

"When the curtain finally rises on Nutcracker, and the overture begins, and the star glitters over the snowy rooftops of Nüremburg, a hush falls backstage. The children appearing in Act I make ready to take their places. Indeed, with beating hearts all the children in Nutcracker suddenly become aware that for the next two hours they will be part of a very special adventure—a journey that in some small way may change their lives forever, just as it may change the life of a child in the audience. For David Richardson, the hectic weeks of rehearsals, the minor and major crises, the seeing to myriad details and performing the role of teacher and surrogate daddy to a small army of children, will have yielded their own rewards.

"My most obvious satisfaction is to see a performance I'm proud of. To see it the way I envisioned it. I'm never concerned with obvious mistakes, which can happen. What thrills and excites me is when I see a certain quality of movement— seeing that I've been able to recreate a charming dance and making it look even more charming by something I've been able to communicate to the children. That's my reward, and that's why I never tire of working on the ballet. Finally, seeing those little bodies on stage creating an atmosphere that simply wouldn't exist without them is terrifically satisfying. Let's face it, Nutcracker without children just wouldn't be the same!"

—Quoted from Dance Magazine

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"Mr. Richardson had sought the work of directing children a decade earlier. He had been chosen for the role of the Little Prince himself as a 12-year-old student at the School of American Ballet, an affiliate of City Ballet, which provides the child dancers each year. 'The prince hangs out a lot but doesn't do much, so I watched rehearsals,' Mr. Richardson recalled.

He learned the part from the ballet mistress Vida Brown and later from Balanchine. 'He was very gentle with me,' Mr. Richardson said. ''He showed me these beautiful things he taught the men about partnering. So I had an innate sense of that when I started working with the kids.'

Mr. Richardson went on to dance with City Ballet as an adult. ''I had carried this wonderful experience with 'Nutcracker' as a child, which solidified my desire to be a dancer,'' he said.''Every year I'd think how great it was to be a child dancing.'

"Eventually, watching rehearsals as an adult, he began to worry about how little passion overworked ballet mistresses brought to the additional job of working with the children. He asked if he could help and within a year was in charge of the child performers, left mainly to his own devices but encouraged by yearly notes of praise from Lincoln Kirstein, City Ballet's co-founder with Balanchine.

“Mr. Richardson still delights in the ways Balanchine’s choreography sweeps the children across the stage, decoratively but freely, like birds in flight, ‘from interesting place to place.’ ‘It is so uncomplicated,’’ he added. ‘The simplicity of it is so beautiful.’"

Quoted from the New York Times, by Jennifer Dunning