A newly-revamped version of holiday favorite “The Nutcracker” will be featured at the Batavia Fine Arts Centre on Sunday, Dec. 21, organizers of the performance said.
The Fine Arts Centre is located inside Batavia High School at 1250 W. Wilson St. in Batavia.
The Aurora-based dance studio Monarch Academy of Dance will perform “The Nutcracker: City Lights,” which is described in a press release as one that will be “featuring the classic story with big city flair full of movement, color and sound.”
“The reimagined version finds Clara in the big city on her own, waltzing into a bright, modern world energized with both classic jazz and traditional holiday spirit,” the release says.
Yorkville resident Amanda Hipperson, who owns Monarch Academy of Dance in Aurora with her husband Gary, said the show has been updated “by about 50%.”
“This is the fourth year we’ve done this and this time we reinvented the wheel,” Amanda Hipperson explained. “We wanted to have a story that was new and exciting and also that could incorporate dancers from the community that did not necessarily specialize in ballet.”
Hipperson summarized the new storyline and said that the major character Clara “is going to the big city and she meets dancers that are like Rockettes-style dancers along the way.”
“When she gets downtown, there’s a big show and something that looks like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and she is bedeviled by the city and that’s where the battle happens,” Hipperson said. “This is based on the same storyline where Clara’s uncle brings her this nutcracker, but then there’s this new portion of it where they get on the train to go to the city, but Clara’s family doesn’t make it on the train, and she ends up in the city alone.”
Hipperson said the idea was to freshen up the presentation and make it something a bit different in order to better engage the audience.
“The whole first act has classic jazz included in the storyline, and we have a live drummer and live musicians, classic jazz,” she said. “We don’t specifically say Chicago but the idea is that it’s a very Chicago jazz vibe and we have that classical ballet and classic jazz. We wanted to take a fresh approach and modernize this and make it more accessible. Sometimes ballet has a very specific audience.”
The professional production includes about 70 dancers from ages 4 to 75. Students from Naperville Central and Waubonsie Valley high schools as well as guest artists from The Joffrey Ballet Chicago and dancers from Monarch’s adaptive dance program will be featured on stage, according to a press release about the performance.
The group actually began preparing for this year’s show back in August when auditions were held, Hipperson said.
“Our main rehearsal day is Sunday, but I’ve been touring to the local schools to meet the … dancers where they’re at,” she said. “It takes multiple days for things to come together.”
There will be only one show and the theater holds about 800 people. The show begins at 7:30 p.m., Dec. 21. Ticket prices range from $40 to $61.
For more information or to purchase tickets, go to www.bataviafineartscentre.org/events/monarch-dance-the-nutcracker/.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.