News Story
With less than a month to go before opening night, we remind ourselves of a time that highlighted the Company's strength, resilience, and determination in making sure the Christmas spirit lived on through a dark and difficult period for the world.
The past few years' runs of The Nutcracker have been a soaring success, with sell-out performances, and an abundance of five-star reviews. Read on as Errika Collins, Principal Viola of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, expresses her love for the production and reveals the work that went into making our Covid-adapted version of The Nutcracker a triumph.
To me, The Nutcracker is as quintessentially Christmassy as mulled wine and mince pies. Seeing the audience arrive, dressed up in their Christmas best, excitedly waiting for the performance to start, never fails to fill me with the Christmas Spirit. Looking up at our audience from the orchestra pit, we have the unusual advantage point of being able to see the joy on people's faces.
Tchaikovsky's incredible score plays a huge part in this joy. It includes some of the ballet's most recognisable pieces of music: the 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,' 'Trepak - the Russian Dance,' and the 'Dance of the Mirlitons'. I will never forget my first rehearsal after many years playing for the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. Everyone knew the music so well - I'm sure that several people could even play it from memory! It's the small nuances that aren't in our parts, the subtle changes of tempo for different dancers which all come so naturally when you play the score 40 times every Christmas. I've often been asked if I ever get bored playing the same music over and over, but I honestly could never get bored of playing Tchaikovsky's wonderfully colourful masterpiece!
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Of course, the Covid Pandemic resulted in a different experience for us all. I was so looking forward to the live performances, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. Instead, for our special online show, we played an adapted version of the score arranged by Rowland Lee. This was to accommodate a slightly reduced version of the orchestra due to the social distancing rules. It was still Tchaikovsky's music - we just doubled up on other instruments' parts. We all needed to pay extra special attention that year as there were many extra notes we were not expecting.
All of these challenges were nothing in comparison to what Birmingham Royal Ballet and the performing arts had to overcome during that time. We were all just so delighted to bring you The Nutcracker, even if it wasn't in person. There were, of course, positives to our show being streamed online. Having normally only been performing to Birmingham and London audiences, we had the opportunity to be seen across the globe. Even my grandmother in Cyprus was able to tune in! And believe it or not, I had never seen the show before as I was always in the pit, so it was incredible to be able to watch it for the first time!
We look forward to seeing you this festive period!
